UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


4 


VP 


£y  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

Uniform  with  this  volume 

SCHILLER 

481  pp.  i2mo.  $1.75  net 

"An  eminently  sympathetic  study,  which 
will  commend  itself  to  the  general  reader  for 
its  avoidance  of  the  minor  pedantries  into 
which  writers  on  German  subjects— not  ex- 
cludmg  Carlyle— are  prone  to  fall.  Particu* 
larly  interesting  is  Professor  Thomas's  dis- 
cussion of  the  philosophy  of  SchWltr. "—New 
York  Evening  Post. 


HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
Publishers  New  York 


GOETHE 


BY 


CALVIN  THOMAS 

Professor  in  Columbia  University 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY   HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1917 


3  ^  4  V  .o 


Copyright.  1917 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

Published  August,  1917 


THE   QUmN    A    BODEN    CO.    PREM 
RAHWAY,    N.    J. 


PREFACE 


Every  scholar  has  his  own  Dante,  his  own  Shakspere, 
his  own  Goethe.  This  book  presents  my  Goethe  as  I  see 
him  after  nearly  forty  years  of  university  teaching  dur- 
ing which  he  has  never  been  long  out  of  my  thoughts. 
I  came  to  him  as  an  undergraduate  by  way  of  Carlyle, 
and  it  was  largely  the  spell  of  Goethe's  great  name  that 
made  me,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  a  professional  student 
of  German  literature.  I  am  conscious  of  owing  more 
to  him  than  to  any  other  writer  of  books.  True,  the 
halo  that  he  used  to  wear  in  my  mind's  eye  has  grown 
a  little  dimmer  in  the  lapse  of  years,  but  his  human 
features  have  come  out  the  more  clearly.  I  like  him 
the  better  for  that. 

But  this  is  not  the  work  of  a  hierophant  or  a  panegyr- 
ist. I  have  not  been  concerned  to  write  Goethe  up  or 
down  or  to  quarrel  with  other  men's  opinions  about  him. 
It  has  seemed  to  me  best  to  leave  all  that  in  the  limbo 
of  large  tolerance  where  he  himself  left  it  in  the  metrical 
squib  which  I  quote  on  page  257.  Nor  have  I  dreamed 
of  adding  anything  to  the  vast  tale  of  available  informa- 
tion relating  to  the  externalities  of  his  life.  That  is 
now  possible  only  in  the  domain  of  the  infinitesimal,  and 
there  are  workers  enough  in  that  vineyard. 

What  I  have  tried  to  do  is  to  portray  him  faithfully 
in  those  larger  aspects  of  his  mind  and  art  and  life-work 
that  make  him  so  uniquely  interesting.     Not  how  he 

iii 


iv  PREFACE 

walked  and  dressed  and  flirted,  or  '  cleared  his  throat 
and  spat,'  but  how  he  felt  and  thought  and  wrought  and 
reacted  to  the  total  push  of  existence — is  the  theme  I 
have  kept  in  view. 

The  first  part  of  the  volume  consists  of  a  short  biog- 
raphy which  I  hope  may  serve  academic  and  other  folk 
as  a  readable  and  trustworthy  introduction  to  the  study 
of  Goethe's  artistic  and  intellectual  achievement.  Here 
I  have  tried  to  pick  my  way  between  too  little  and  too 
much;  between  the  jejuneness  of  a  mere  sketch  and  the 
cloying  plenitude  of  details  that  are  found  in  the  longer 
biographies.  I  have  endeavored  to  write  as  objectively 
as  possible,  taking  care  to  see  things  just  as  they  really 
were  and  never  to  let  personal  bias  of  any  kind  distort 
the  image.  The  pronoun  I  does  not  occur  in  this  por- 
tion of  the  volume. 

In  the  second  part,  on  the  other  hand,  I  relax  the 
reins  for  my  ego,  since  it  was  of  set  purpose  my  Goethe 
and  no  one  else's  that  was  to  be  bodied  forth.  Of  course 
I  think  it  nearer  to  the  truth  than  other  men's — such  is 
human  vanity — but  I  will  not  labor  the  point.  Probably 
some  good  judges  will  object  to  my  perspective  and  my 
lights  and  shades,  and  urge  that  more  of  this  and  less 
of  that  would  have  been  better.  Be  it  so.  I  will  only 
say  that  my  '  studies  and  appreciations  '  deal  with  what 
seem  to  me  the  larger  and  more  memorable  aspects  of 
Goethe's  life-work. 

Such  a  scheme  as  that  here  adopted  inevitably  entails 
some  repetition.  I  have  tried  to  keep  that  evil  within 
tolerable  and  inconspicuous  limits,  and  also  to  avoid  re- 
peating— it  was  not  always  easy — what  I  have  written 
about  Goethe  in  other  books.    A  few  sentences  and  some 


PREFACE  V 

metrical  translations  in  Chapter  IX  have  been  taken  over 
from  an  essay  entitled  '  Goethe  and  the  Conduct  of  Life/ 
which  was  published  many  years  ago  and  has  long  been 
out  of  print.  A  portion  of  Chapter  X  appeared  some 
time  ago  in  the  Open  Court  under  the  title  of  *  Goethe 
and  the  Development  Hypothesis  '  and  is  here  reprinted 
by  permission. 

Finally,  I  indulge  the  hope  that  m.ost  readers  will  thank 
me  for  not  troubling  them  with  many  foot-notes.  Those 
who  wish  to  know  the  source  of  my  numerous  citations 
are  respectfully  referred  to  the  Appendix. 

Calvin  Thomas. 

New  York,  May,  1917. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 
LINEAGE  AND  BOYHOOD 

PAGE 

Goethe's  paternal  ancestry — His  mother's  family— Traits  of  his 
parents— Wolfgang's  childhood— Frankfort  impressions- 
French  soldiers  in  the  Goethe  household— Wolfgang's  in- 
terest in  th©  French  theater— His  schooling— His  poetic 
faculty — Story-telling — Favorite  reading — Early  reaction  to 
Klopstock— Large  ambition— Trouble  over  Gretchen«^Soli- 
tude  as  a  cure— Departure  for  the  university       ...        3 

CHAPTER  H 

STUDENT  LIFE 

Leipsic  in  1765 — Goethe's  university  studies — Disappointed  in 
Gellert— Disgust  with  academic  learning— Collapse  of  po- 
etic ambition — Recovery  and  new  resolution — Love-affair*^ 
with  Annette  Schonkopf— The  '  Annette '  poems—'  The 
Lover's  Wayward  Humor ' — Art-studies  under  Oeser — 
Illness  of  1768— An  invalid  prisoner  at  Frankfort — Re- 
ligious awakening — Studies  in  magic  and  alchemy — Om- 
nivorous reading — Publication  of  the  '  New  Songs  ' — The 
'  Fellow-Culprits  '—Resumes  study  at  Strassburg— French 
prestige  then  on  the  wane— Interest  in  the  Strassburg 
cathedral— Revulsion  of  feeling  against  the  French— Ac- 
quaintance with  Herder— Herder's  revolutionary  ideas — 
Goethe  converted  to  the  new  gospel— Romance  with  w^ 
Friederike  Brion— Remorse  over  his  perfidy— Poetic  ex- 
piation     19 

CHAPTER  HI 

YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS 

Law-studies  and  practice— Literary  interests  and  projects— The 
making  of  '  Gottfried  von  Berlichingen  '—Its  perversion 
of  history — Studies  of  the  Greeks  and  of  Ossian — Wild 
feeling  for  nature — Friendship  with  Merck — The  senti-v^ 
mental  damsels  of  Darmstadt— The  *  Wanderer ' — A  cam- 
paign of   review-writing — Life  in  Wetzlar — Visit  to  Frau 


viii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

La  Roche  in  Koblenz — Youthful  attitude  toward  life  and 
art — '  Gotz  von  Berlichingen  '  published — Moods  and  proj- 
ects of  1773 — Origin  of  '  Werther^'^Emotional  tension 
and  Dumpfheit — Relations  with  Wieland — Minor  works 
of  1774  and  1775 — '  Clavigo  '  and  '  Stella ' — The  mood  of 
revolt  in  its  different  phases — '  Prometheus  '  and  *  Faust ' — 
'  Egmont ' — Engagement  to  *  Lili ' — Visit  to  Switzerland — V* 
Invited  to  visit  Weimar 40 

CHAPTER  IV 

NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR 

The  change  to  Weimar  salutary — Weimar  in  1775 — The  court 
circle — Duke  Karl  August — Gay  times  and  gossip — Herder 
called  to  Weunar — Goethe's  decision  to  remain — His  offi- 
cial duties-xJLove  for  Frau  von  Stein — Mental  unrest — 
Trips  to  Harz  Mountains  and  to  Switzerland — Scientific 
studies — Increasing  official  burdens — Success  in  public  life 
— Changed  frame  of  mind — Influence  of  Spinoza — Stagna- 
tion of  old  literary  projects — Temper  of  the  new  songs  and 
poems — project  of  the  'Mysteries' — The  fragment  '  El- 
penor  ' — '  Wilhelm  Meister's  Theatrical  Mission  '         .       .      61 

CHAPTER  V 

SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 

Moodiness  due  to  conflicting  claims  of  poetry  and  business — 
Need  of  a  change — Plans  a  new  edition  of  his  works — 
Sudden  flight  to  Italy — Notes  of  travel — Delight  in  Italian 
art — Impressions  received  at  Verona,  Venice,  and  Bologna 
— Life  in  Rome  and  spiritual  rebirth — '  Iphigenie '  com- 
pleted in  verse — Character  of  the  play — Visit  to  Naples 
and  Sicily — Second  sojourn  in  Rome — '  Egmont ' — The 
early  Singspiele  revised — Work  on  '  Faust '  resumed — Con- 
flicting claims  of  painting  and  poetry — Retur^  to_  Ger- 
many— Weimar  felt  to  be  dull  and  parochial-^onscience- 
marriage  with  Christiane  Vulpius — '  Faust '  sent  to  the 
publisher  as  a  fragment — '  Tasso  '— »^he  *  Roman  Elegies ' 
— Study  of  chromatics — Second  visit  to  Venice — Plays 
dealing  with  the  revolutionary  excitement — Joins  the  cam- 
paign against  the  French — Translation  of  '  Reynard  the 
Fox' 81 

CHAPTER  VI 

ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER 

Beginning  of  friendship  with  Schiller— Project  of  the  Horen 
— The  magazine  not  a  popular  success — Goethe's  contribu- 
tions :   the   '  Roman   Elegies,'    '  Cellini,'   and   the   '  Diver- 


CONTENTS  IX 


sions  ' — The  *  Xenia,'  '  Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprenticeship ' 
— Discussion  of  the  novel — Study  of  the  ballad  and  epic — 

*  Hermann  and  Dorothea  ' — '  Faust '  resumed  ;  the  revised 
scheme — The  '  Natural  Daughter  ' — Typical  art — The  Pro- 
pyldcn — Goethe's  militant  classicism — The  tribute  to  Winck- 
elmann — Travels,  studies,  theatrical  activities — Deeply  af- 
fected by  the  death  of  Schiller 103 

CHAPTER  VII 

MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS 

Temper  and  renown  of  the  aging  Goethe — Tribute  to  Schiller 
— The  Battle  of  Jena-irMarriage  legalized  in  church — 
Efforts  on  behalf  of  the  University  of  Jena — Absorbed 
in  literary  work,  silent  with  regard  to  public  events — Inter- 
views with  Napoleon — Attitude  toward  Napoleon  dis- 
cussed— Work  on  '  Theory  of  Color '  and  continuation  of 

*  Wilhelm  Meister ' — New  interest  in  the  sonnet— ^linna 
Herzlieb  and  the  '  Elective  Affinities  ' — Discussion  of  the 
novel — The  fragmentary  '  Pandora  ' — Reception  of  the 
First  Part  of  '  Faust ' — Discussion  of  the  *  Theory  of 
Color' — Goethe's  acquiescence  in  the  Napoleonic  regime — 

*  Poetry  and  Truth  ' 124 

CHAPTER  VIII 

SENEX  MIRABILIS 

The  name  justified — Attitude  during  the  Wars  of  Liberation — 
The  '  Awakening  of  Epimenides  ' — The  new  era  of  consti- 
tutionalism in  Weimar — The  Wartburg  festival  of  181 7 — 
The  murder  of  Kotzebue — End  of  directorship  of  Weimar 
theater — Attitude  toward  various  individuals — The  Rhine- 
land  revisited  in  1814 — The  St.  Rochus  festival  at  Bingen 
— Acquaintance  with  Boisseree  and  kindlier  feeling-toward 
Catholicism — Preparations  for  the  '  Divan  '-^^larianne 
Willemer — Poetic  character  of  the  '  Divan  ' — Various  bio- 
graphic writings — Other  literary  and  scientific  labors — 
vFnterest  in  Ulrike  von  Levetzow — The  making  of  '  Wil- 
helm Meister's  Wanderings ' — Interest  in  incipient  social- 
ism— Completion  of  the  Second  Part  of  '  Faust ' — Last 
days  and  death 147 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE  PHILOSOPHER 

Goethe's  aversion  to  metaphysics — His  philosophy  to  be  pieced 
together  from  passages  in  his  imaginative  and  scientific 
writings — Cosmic  dynamism  in  the  early  scenes  of  '  Faust ' 
— The    curious    cosmogony    he    had    extracted    from    his 


CONTENTS 


study  of  the  cabalists — Early  reaction  against  speculative 
constructions  of  the  universe — This  agnosticism  recorded 
in  '  Faust ' — His  way  of  thinking  very  diflferent  from 
Spinoza's — What  attracted  him  to  Spinoza — The  Spinozan 
doctrines  of  self-assertion,  self-control,  and  self-surrender 
— These  doctrines  the  basis  of  Goethe's  ethics — Illustrative 
citations — Indebtedness  to  Kant — The  law  of  polarity — 
Law  of  ascent — Influence  of  Schelling's  intellectual  intui- 
tion— Goethe's  doctrine  of  types — Morphology  the  funda- 
mental science — Application  of  the  laws  of  polarity  and 
ascent — Periodicity — Action  and  reaction — Nature  of  free- 
dom— Relativity  of  good  and  bad — No  absolutes  anywhere 
— Life  a  battle  of  antagonistic  forces  seeking  equilibrium — 
Ideal  of  poise — Conception  of  duty — The  final  equilibrium    171 

CHAPTER  X 

THE  EVOLUTIONIST 

The  debate  over  Goethe's  merit  as  a  man  of  science — Two 
questions  involved — Beginning  of  his  interest  in  geology — 
Reverence  for  granite — Anti-vulcanism — Respect  for  bit- 
by-bit  evolution — Forecasts  a  new  era  in  paleontology — 
Anticipates  glacial  theory — Study  of  botany — Aversion  to 
'  cutting  up  and  counting  ' — Search  for  the  typical  plant — 
Paper  on  plant  metamorphosis — Studies  in  animal  mor- 
phology— Discovery  of  an  os  intermaxillare  in  man — Mean-  ' 
ing  he  attached  to  such  terms  as  Typus,  Urbild,  etc. — The 
opinion  of  some  that  the  terms  involved  no  idea  of  de- 
scent— Difficulty  of  the  question — Citations  to  show  that 
he  held  the  idea  of  descent  at  least  vaguely — Symbolism 
of  Homunculus — Rejection  of  teleological  explanations — 
Summary  of  the  discussion 197 

CHAPTER  XI 

THE  BELIEVER 

Limits  of  Goethe's  interest  in  religion — His  youthful  conver- 
sion to  pietism — Prayer  better  than  proofs — Dislike  of  the 
pietists'  other-worldliness — Symbols  and  intermediaries  a 
lower  surrogate  for  real  religion — Aversion  to  dogmatism 
and  proselyting — Phases  of  emotional  religion  in  '  Werther  ' 
— Apotheosis  of  feeling  in  '  Faust ' — Post-adolescent  phase 
— Spinoza  again — Unknowableness  of  the  All — Attitude 
toward  Christianity — Dislike  of  sacerdotalism  and  theol- 
ogy— Belief  in  providential  guidance — Folly  of  professing 
to  fathom  and  declare  the  nature  of  God — Respect  for 
*  divine  mysteries ' — Aversion  to  the  higher  criticism — 
The  Divinity  active  only  in  what  is  alive — Forecast  of  the 
decay  of  sectarianism — Resolute  belief  in  immortality — 
Way  of  arguing  the  question 215 


CONTENTS  xi 

CHAPTER  XII 


THE  POET  ^ 


PAGE 


Scope  of  the  study — Remarks  on  the  sphere  of  the  modern 
poet — What  it  boots  us  to  know  about  a  poet — Goethe's 
youth  not  remarkably  prohfic  of  song — Lyric  themes  that 
are  alien  to  his  muse — Sang  mostly  of  love  and  nature — 
Love  in  the  Leipsic  songs — The  truer  ring  of  the  Sesen- 
heim  lyrics — Love  as  bliss  and  torment — Nameless  pain  as 
a  lyric  theme — Songs  of  the  decade  1776-1786 — Their  pro- 
found ethicism — The  new  feeling  for  nature — Cosmic  emo- 
tion— Influence  of  Frau  von  Stein — Eroticism  of  the  '  Ro- 
man Elegies ' — Theory  of  the  poet  as  the  discoverer  of 
underlying  harmony  in  life's  discords — Difficulties  of  a 
theory  which  virtually  identifies  poetry  with  philosophy — 
Transition  to  the  pensive,  contemplative  attitude — No 
room  now  for  passion  and  tragic  discord — The  aging 
Goethe's  predilection  for  gnomic  verse — Much  of  his  pro- 
duction not  inspired — But  the  lyric  glow  never  died  out  .     236 

CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  DRAMATIST 

Limitation  of  the  study — Remarks  on  the  literary  drama — The 
essential  nature  of  drama — Variability  of  spectators — 
Goethe's  environment — Extent  of  his  production  in  the 
dramatic  form — A  stirring  public  life  and  a  flourishing 
theater  needed  for  the  production  of  great  drama — These 
conditions  lacking  in  Goethe's  case — State  of  the  German 
theater  in  his  youth — His  '  Gotz  '  a  literary  experiment — 
Its  strength  and  weakness — Youthful  predilection  for 
weak-willed  heroes  unfortunate  for  a  would-be  dramatist 
— The  fickle  lover  not  highly  interesting  on  the  stage — 
Clavigo  a  hero  with  no  full-fledged  tragic  guilt — Dramatic 
nullity  of  '  Stella ' — Perfection  of  the  individual  the  theme 
of  the  later  metrical  plays — The  issues  of  personal  culture 
not  dramatic — '  Iphigenie  '  characterized  by  literary  charm 
rather  than  dramatic  power — '  Egmont '  and  '  Tasso  '  subtle 
character-studies,  not  great  plays — The  other  plays,  ex- 
cept '  Faust '  rejected  by  the  stage 258 

CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  NOVELIST 

The  topic  defined — 'Werther'  a  brilliant  novelty,  yet  not  alto- 
gether new — German  novel-writing  prior  to  Goethe — Grim- 
melshausen — The  Robinsonades — The  Richardsonian  novel 
— Wieland — Rousseau — *  Werther  '  a  morbid  book,  but 
wonderful  for  its  artistic  power-^Its  tense  style — Hectic 


xii  CONTENTS 


poetry  of  passion — Rapidity  of  movement — Hyperesthesia 
— Nature-worship — '  Meister '  conceived  as  an  antidote  to 

*  Werther  ' — Choice  of  a  wandering  actor-hero — The  tech- 
nic  a  blend  of  old  and  new — Comparison  of  original  with 
final  version — The  ending  as  originally  conceived — Change 
from  the  '  mission  '  to  the  '  apprenticeship  '  idea — Endless- 
ness of  the  scheme — Critical  comments — The  '  Elective  Af- 
finities '  technically  more  akin  to  '  Werther '  than  to 
'  Meister ' — Not  a  novel  of  tendency — Ottilie's  renuncia- 
tion the  real  theme — Effect  of  inevitableness — Goethe's 
shorter  stories — The  *  Diversions  ' — '  Novelle '       .       .       .    281 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE  CRITIC 

Extent  of  Goethe's  critical  writing — State  of  criticism  in  his 
day — His    early    hostility    to    all    theorizing — Hatred    of 

*  gapers  and  babblers  ' — Good  doctrine  intemperately  stated 
— Change  of  attitude  in  middle  life — Takes  kindly  to 
theorizing — Theory  of  the  poet  as  a  seeker  of  harmony 
amid  discord — The  ideas  advocated  in  the  Propylden — 
Theory  of  typical  art — Epoch  of  extreme  censoriousness 
— Critical  assault  on  Diderot — Plans  caustic  treatise  on 
dilettantism — Abatement  of  polemic  ardor  in  reviews  of 
1804-1807 — Spirit  of  live-and-let-live — Everything  good 
that  has  '  character ' — Final  epoch  of  Panoramic  Benevo- 
lence— Miscellaneous  utterances 304 

CHAPTER  XVI 

FAUST 

'Faust'  Goethe's  confession  of  faith  in  the  goodness  of  life — 
His  universalism — Faust's  salvation  not  a  reward  of  merit 
but  a  stage  of  progress — The  germ  of  the  play  despair  of 
the  intellectual  life — This  Goethe  had  felt — His  early  con- 
ception of  Faust's  character — Natural  magic  versus  the 
vulgar  black  art — The  original  plot — How  was  it  to  have 
ended? — The  whole  play  built  out  of  silly  superstition 
transfigured — The  love-potion — The  revised  scheme  of 
1797 — Genesis  of  the  '  Helena  ' — The  process  of  filling-in 
before  and  after — Three  aspects  of  Faust's  mental  clear- 
ing-up  at  the  end — General  observations  on  the  Sec- 
ond Part 325 


PART  FIRST 
A  SHORT  BIOGRAPHY 


ERRATA 
Page  8i,  ninth  line  from  bottom,  for  planet  readp\a.ut. 
Page  96,  eighth  line  from  top,  for  with  past  read  with  the  past. 


xii  (X)NTENTS 


poetry  of  passion — Rapidity  of  movement — Hyperesthesia 
— Nature-worship — '  Meister '  conceived  as  an  antidote  to 
'  Werther  ' — Choice  of  a  wandering  actor-hero — The  tech- 
nic  a  blend  of  old  and  new — Comparison  of  original  with 
final  version — The  ending  as  originally  conceived — Change 
from  the  '  mission  '  to  the  '  apprenticeship '  idea — Endless- 
ness of  the  scheme — Critical  comments — The  '  Elective  Af- 
finities '  technically  more  akin  to  '  Werther '  than  to 
*  Meister  ' — Not  a  novel  of  tendency — Ottilie's  renuncia- 
tion the  real  theme — Effect  of  inevitableness — Goethe's 
shorter  stories — The  '  Diversions  ' — '  Novelle  '       .       .       .     281 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE  CRITIC 

Extent  of  Goethe's  critical  writing — State  of  criticism  in  his 
day — His  early  hostility  to  all  theorizing — Hatred  of 
'  gapers  and  babblers  ' — Good  doctrine  intemperately  stated 
— Change  of  attitude  in  middle  life — Takes  kindly  to 
theorizing — Theory  of  the  poet  as  a  seeker  of  harmony 
amid  discord — The  ideas  advocated  in  the  Propylden — 
Theory  of  typical  art — Epoch  of  extreme  censoriousness 
— Critical  assault  on  Diderot — Plans  caustic  treatise  on 
dilettantism — Abatement  of  polemic  ardor  in  reviews  of 
1804-1807 — Spirit  of  live-and-let-live — Everything  good 
that  has  'character* — Final  epoch  of  Panoramic  Benevo- 
lence— Miscellaneous  utterances 304 

CHAPTER  XVI 


PART  FIRST 
A  SHORT  BIOGRAPHY 


CHAPTER  I 
LINEAGE  AND  BOYHOOD 

What  is  known  of  Goethe's  paternal  ancestry  begins 
about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  with  a  cer- 
tain Hans  Christian  Goethe,  a  blacksmith  by  trade,  who 
was  then  living  at  the  village  of  Artern  some  thirty  miles 
north  of  Weimar.  A  son  of  his  named  Friedrich  Georg 
was  bred  to  the  tailor's  calling  and  settled  in  Frankfort- 
on-the-Main,  where  he  married  the  daughter  of  a  tailor 
and  acquired  the  rights  of  citizenship.  His  business  pros- 
pered and  by  1704  he  was  listed  for  taxation  in  the 
richest  class  of  Frankfort  burghers,  those  having  prop- 
erty to  the  amount  of  fifteen  thousand  gulden.  A  second 
marriage  with  a  well-to-do  widow  named  Cornelia 
Schelhorn  still  further  increased  the  thrifty  tailor's 
estate  and  made  him  landlord  of  the  Weidenhof  Inn. 
One  of  the  children  of  this  pair  was  Johann  Caspar 
Goethe,  the  poet's  father.     He  was  born  in  1710. 

The  ambitious  parents  decided  to  give  their  son  a 
lawyer's  education,  which  would  make  him  a  peer  of 
the  best  in  self-governing  Frankfort  and  perhaps  open 
the  way  to  some  honorable  position  in  the  service  of 
the  city.  So  Johann  Caspar  prepared  for  the  university, 
heard  lectures  at  Leipsic  and  Giessen,  studied  the  prac- 
tice of  the  imperial  chamber  of  justice  at  Wetzlar,  and 
in  1738  took  his  degree.     Then  he  traveled  in  foreign 

3 


4  GOETHE 

countries,  sojourning  some  time  in  Italy  and  bringing 
home  a  precious  little  store  of  Italian  books,  prints,  and 
memories,  which  were  henceforth  to  light  up  his  hum- 
drum life  with  a  gleam  of  poetry.  For  his  hopes  of  a 
public  career  came  to  naught,  leaving  him  with  nothing 
in  particular  to  do  and  a  grievance  against  the  unap- 
preciative  city  fathers.  To  assert  his  dignity  and  soothe 
his  wounded  pride  he  procured  from  the  imperial  chan- 
celry  the  title  of  Councilor.  This  was  in  1742.  For 
some  years  more  he  lived  on  with  his  aged  mother  in 
the  roomy  house  on  the  Hirschgraben,  and  then  came 
the  happy  thought — so  posterity  must  forever  regard 
it — of  marrying  Catherine  Elisabeth  Textor. 

The  Frankfort  Textors  were  of  ancient  and  high 
respectability  won  by  learning  and  public  service.  Back 
in  the  sixteenth  century  we  hear  of  a  certain  Georg 
Weber,  an  official  in  the  service  of  the  Count  of  Hohen- 
lohe,  who  transmitted  his  name  in  the  Latinized  form 
of  Textor  to  a  son  called  Wolfgang.  From  him  there 
is  an  unbroken  line  of  lawyer-magistrates  running  down 
to  Johann  Wolfgang  Textor,  born  in  1693.  This  is 
the  grandfather  of  whom  Goethe  writes  so  engagingly  in 
his  autobiography — the  boy  Wolfgang's  first  symbol 
of  human  greatness.  Called  in  the  prime  of  life  to  a 
seat  in  the  Frankfort  council,  he  served  the  city  well 
and  in  1747  became  its  chief  magistrate.  He  had  four 
daughters,  of  whom  Catherine  Elisabeth,  born  in  1731, 
was  the  eldest.  She  was  thus  some  twenty  years  younger 
than  Councilor  Goethe,  to  whom  she  was  married  in 
1748.  It  was  not  a  romantic  alliance.  The  tailor's  son 
wished  to  strengthen  his  social  position,  the  poor  patrician 
to  see  his  daughter  well  provided  for. 


LINEAGE  AND  BOYHOOD  5 

The  first  child  of  these  parents,  Johann  Wolfgang 
Goethe,  destined  to  become  the  most  illustrious  of  German 
writers,  was  born  on  the  28th  of  August,  1749. 

In  this  prosaic  lineage  of  lawyers  and  workingmen 
there  is  little  forewarning  of  the  genius  that  was  to 
produce  '  Faust.'  We  do  find,  it  is  true,  some  traits  of 
the  coming  man,  but  it  is  hardly  worth  while  to  dwell 
on  any  remote  and  elusive  factors.  In  his  mother,  cer- 
tainly, the  newcomer  was  highly  blest.  Frau  Aja,  as 
they  afterwards  called  her,  was  a  cheery  person,  a  blithe 
and  orderly  housekeeper,  a  charming  letter-writer,  im- 
aginative, religious  without  thinking  much  of  the  proofs 
or  the  sanctions,  and  quickly  responsive  to  another's  joy 
or  sorrow.     She  once  said  of  herself : 

It  is  God's  grace  to  me  that  no  human  soul,  of  whatever 
station,  age  or  sex,  ever  went  away  from  me  displeased.  As 
is  felt  by  old  and  young,  I  am  very  fond  of  people.  I  go 
about  the  world  without  pretense,  and  that  suits  everybody.  I 
do  not  bemoralize  anyone  and  I  always  try  to  spy  out  the  good 
side,  leaving  the  bad  to  Him  who  created  men  and  best  knows 
how  to  smoothe  off  the  sharp  corners. 

The  gift  on  which  she  especially  prided  herself  was  her 
story-telling.  '  Write  books  ?  '  she  once  said ;  '  no,  I  can 
not  do  that,  but  in  telling  over  what  others  have  written 
I  can  beat  them  all.'  In  her  early  married  life  she  had 
much  to  bear  in  the  loss  of  several  children  and  in  the 
growing  acerbity  of  her  husband;  yet  she  always  retained 
a  certain  childfike  directness  and  impulsiveness.  In  her 
letters,  even  those  written  in  her  later  years,  she  appears 
as  one  whose  heart  is  quite  untouched  by  time. 

The  father  was  a  being  of  a  different  kind.  Rigid 
and  formal  in  his  ways,  fussy  and  easily  ruffled,  he  was 


6  GOETHE 

much  given  to  arranging  and  inspecting  his  possessions 
both  material  and  spiritual.  After  his  marriage  he  led 
a  laboriously  idle  life  at  Frankfort,  his  chief  occupations 
being  the  supervision  of  domestic  affairs,  the  teaching- 
of  his  children,  and  the  pursuit  of  various  little  hobbies. 
He  had  a  bent  for  puttering  and  but  little  of  his  son's 
passion  for  conquering  new  realms  of  the  spirit.  Being 
so  much  older  than  his  wife  and  of  a  very  different 
temperament,  he  could  sympathize  but  little  with  her 
vivacious  light-heartedness;  he  played  the  schoolmaster 
with  her  as  with  the  children.  He  was  a  martinet 
for  discipline,  set  great  store  by  the  formalities,  and  held 
it  a  fault  to  show  tenderness.  Six  children  in  all  were 
born  to  the  pair,  but  none  reached  maturity  except  Wolf- 
gang and  a  sister,  Cornelia,  born  in  1750. 

There  are  some  well-known  verses  of  Goethe  in  which 
he  derives  his  serious  bent  from  his  father,  his  joyous 
temperament  from  his  mother.  It  will  be  seen  as  we  go 
on  that  during  approximately  the  first  third  of  his  life — 
the  period  covered  by  his  autobiography — the  maternal 
strain  was  dominant;  not,  however,  as  an  equable  '  gay- 
ety  '  (Frohnatur) ,  but  in  the  form  of  an  extreme  nervous 
instability  such  as  very  often  goes  with  imaginative  genius 
of  a  high  order.  Ordinarily,  in  his  youth,  he  was  cheer- 
ful and  companionable;  men  and  women  alike  were 
strongly  drawn  to  him.  But  there  were  also  times  of 
depression,  hypochondria,  disgust  with  life.  The  mel- 
ancholia of  adolescence  hit  him  very  hard,  and  tension 
of  feeling  sometimes  brought  him  near  to  the  danger- 
point.  He  knew  all  moods,  his  capacity  for  experience 
was  boundless.  In  the  course  of  time  he  became  more 
like   his    father — sedate,   methodical,   circumspect.     But 


LINEAGE  AND  BOYHOOD  7 

from  boyhood  to  old  age  his  two  ruHng  procHvities  were 
the  passion  for  artistic  creation  and  the  desire  to  make 
the  most  of  Hfe. 

In  the  main  Goethe's  childhood  was  a  pleasant  unfold- 
ing of  natural  aptitudes  in  an  atmosphere  of  comfort 
and  refinement.  Neither  early  nor  late  is  there  any  tale 
to  tell  of  toughening  struggle  with  poverty  or  any  other 
external  adversity;  so  it  seems  that  Mother  Nature  can. 
do  without  that,  if  she  will,  when  she  sets  out  to  fashion 
a  poet  by  her  largest  pattern.  Still,  his  good  fortune 
has  been  a  little  too  much  dwelt  on  and  not  always  painted 
in  colors  exactly  true  to  life.  One  should  by  no  means 
imagine  him  at  Frankfort  as  lapped  in  luxury  and  unac- 
quainted with  the  bitter  tonics  of  boyish  experience. 
While  the  family  belonged  to  the  patrician  class  by  virtue 
of  the  mother's  connections,  this  class  itself  was  only 
the  intellectual  aristocracy  of  a  small  town  of  some  thirty 
thousand  inhabitants  none  of  whom  were  very  rich.  As 
for  Councilor  Goethe,  albeit  he  liked  to  surround  him- 
self with  the  tokens  of  culture  and  opulence,  he  was  at 
bottom  of  a  decidedly  frugal  mind.  There  was  never 
the  least  danger  of  his  spoiling  his  children  by  over- 
indulgence. 

And  so  Wolfgang  escaped  the  corrosive  power  of 
riches  and  never  suffered  because  of  his  advantages.  To 
the  end  of  his  days  he  remained  quite  indifferent  to  the 
seductions  of  luxury.  As  a  child  he  did  his  tasks  easily 
and  was  soon  left  much  to  himself.  What  there  was  to 
see  in  quaint  old  Frankfort  he  saw  with  a  boy's  eager 
curiosity.  He  explored  the  town,  with  its  bustling  fair, 
its  wonderful  stone  bridge,  and  its  Romer  with  reminders 
of  Holy  Roman  pomp.     In  one  way  and  another  he  was 


8  GOETHE 

a  good  deal  in  contact  with  life  in  the  rough.  He  learned 
to  love  the  racy  dialect  of  the  plain  people.  He  investi- 
gated the  ghetto,  became  acquainted  with  some  of  its 
denizens,  and  learned  a  bit  of  their  lingo.  He  came  more 
or  less  into  relations  with  boys  less  daintily  bred  than 
himself. 

To  what  extent  the  mind  and  art  of  the  coming  poet 
were  shaped  by  these  early  Frankfort  impressions  it  is 
hard  to  say.  Some  of  his  later  imaginative  writings, 
notably  *  Faust,'  contain  reminiscences  of  the  town,  but 
that  fact  does  not  signify  much.  Fortunately  nascent 
genius  does  not  depend  very  much  on  local  environment, 
but  thrives  in  any  place.  What  it  finds  turns  out  to  be 
what  it  needs.  In  Frankfort  there  were  no  very  fine 
buildings,  no  remarkable  pictures  or  sculptures  to  be  seen; 
but  there  w^ere  mementoes  of  a  long  and  notable  past, 
and  there  were  quaint  and  curious  customs,  especially 
in  connection  with  the  coronation  of  an  emperor.  These 
fed  the  boy's  imagination  and  quickened  his  love  of 
picturesque  symbolism.  Public  life  was  tame.  There 
was  no  prince,  no  court,  no  great  loyalty  to  the  empire. 
To  be  sure,  the  burghers  were  a  little  proud  of  their 
position  in  the  imperial  fabric  and  did  their  part  hand- 
somely when  an  emperor  was  to  be  crowned.  At  heart, 
however,  they  did  not  care  much  for  the  empire  and 
thought  far  more  of  their  privileges  than  of  their  duties. 
Public  law  and  custom  were  still  determined  to  a  lament- 
able degree  by  the  ossified  prejudice  of  caste  and  guild. 
Under  such  conditions  there  was  little  enough  to  stimulate 
a  boy's  love  of  country  or  to  quicken  in  him  the  sentiment 
of  political  loyalty.  That  peculiar  development  of  the 
herd-instinct  that  we  call  patriotism  never  came  natural 


LINEAGE  AND  BOYHOOD  9 

to  Goethe  and  played  a  very  small  part  in  his  early  devel- 
opment. 

The  Seven  Years'  War  brought  its  own  peculiar  school- 
ing. With  boyhood's  usual  love  of  a  good  fighter  Wolf- 
gang took  sides  with  his  father  in  favor  of  the  Prussian 
^  king,  while  the  mother  and  her  family  sympathized  more 
with  the  Austrians.  There  were  hot  disputes  wherein 
the  boy  was  compelled  to  hear  his  hero  vilified  by  persons 
whom  it  was  his  duty  to  revere  for  their  wisdom.  This 
gave  rise  to  unruly  thoughts  about  human  justice,  even 
as  the  Lisbon  earthquake  had  stirred  up  the  question  of 
divine  justice.  Thus  the  coming  dramatist  got  a  lesson 
on  the  two-sidedness  of  questions,  and  the  idols  of 
authority  were  shattered  before  his  eyes. 

And  then  came,  in  1759,  the  forcible  occupation  of 
Frankfort  by  a  French  army  of  seven  thousand  men 
under  the  Prince  de  Soubise  and  the  billeting  of  the  Comte 
de  Thoranc  in  the  Goethe  house,  which  had  lately  been 
enlarged  and  remodeled  into  a  somewhat  pretentious 
mansion.  The  Comte  de  Thoranc — Goethe  calls  him 
Thorane — was  a  suave  and  chivalrous  aristocrat  from 
Provence.  His  military  rank  was  that  of  royal  lieutenant 
of  infantry,  and  it  fell  to  him  during  the  French  occupa- 
tion of  Frankfort  to  act  as  umpire  and  arbiter  in  matters 
of  dispute  between  the  citizens  and  their  unwelcome 
guests.  Being  a  man  of  artistic  tastes  he  took  occasion  to 
employ  local  artists  to  paint  pictures  for  his  chateau  in 
France.  It  was  through  his  influence  that  a  company  of 
players  came  over  from  Metz  and  set  up  a  French  theater. 
The  various  operations  of  the  Comte  de  Thoranc  filled  the 
house  with  a  bustle  of  litigants,  visitors,  artists,  and 
players,  who  were  a  terrible  trial  to  Councilor  Goethe, 


lo  GOETHE 

with  his  strong  Prussian  sympathies  and  his  tempera- 
mental aversion  to  being  disturbed  in  his  routine.  To 
the  boy  Wolfgang,  however,  it  was  all  very  entertaining 
and  brought  a  world  of  new  impressions.  He  watched 
the  artists  at  their  work,  overheard  and  took  part  in  their 
discussions,  and  came  to  regard  himself  as  a  bit  of  a 
connoisseur  in  pictures. 

In  another  way,  too,  he  turned  the  presence  of  the 
soldiers  to  good  account.  For  the  sake  of  his  French 
he  was  permitted  to  attend  the  theater.  At  first,  of 
course,  he  did  not  understand  the  language;  but  he  had 
the  good  fortune  to  make  friends  with  a  French  boy, 
De  Rosne,  the  son  of  one  of  the  actresses,  who  became 
his  playmate  and  soon  made  him  at  home  both  before 
and  behind  the  scenes.  In  a  short  time  he  had  picked 
up  a  good  knowledge  of  French  and  was  actually  engaged 
in  writing  a  French  play  and  debating  the  far-famed 
unities  with  his  comrade  from  over  the  Rhine.  As  the 
little  Frenchman  talked  with  sapient  assurance  on  the 
subject  Wolfgang  procured  a  copy  of  Corneille's  essay 
and  tried  to  post  himself  on  the  doctrine;  but  he  soon 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  plays  were  better  than 
the  recipe  for  making  them.  He  heard  metrical  come- 
dies of  Destouches,  Marivaux,  and  La  Chaussee,  and 
also  various  tragedies,  among  which,  half  a  century  later, 
he  remembered  the  *  Hypermnestra '  of  Lemierre  most 
vividly.  What  he  had  seen  of  Moliere  at  this  early  date 
had  entirely  faded  from  his  memory,  tho  he  could  recall 
having  read  him  with  interest.    He  also  read  Racine. 

So  it  appears  that  by  the  time  he  was  twelve  years 
old  Wolfgang  was  well  grounded  not  only  in  the  language 
but  in  the  poetic  drama  of  the  people  to  which,  for  a 


LINEAGE  AND  BOYHOOD  ii 

century  and  a  half,  the  Germans  had  looked  up  as  to  the 
source  of  all  light  and  authority  in  matters  literary.  His 
ideas  of  the  stage  and  of  the  dramatic  art  had  come  to 
him  by  way  of  France.  For  years  to  come  he  wrote  a 
good  part  of  his  letters  in  French  and  often  essayed 
French  verses.  To  perfect  himself  in  that  language 
became  one  of  his  fixed  aspirations.  After  a  while  his 
mind  underwent  a  revulsion  against  French  art  in  all 
its  forms,  but  this  was  only  a  passing  phase  of  youthful 
radicalism.  The  mature  Goethe,  the  friend  of  clear- 
ness, never  forgot  his  debt  to  the  French  genius. 

It  was  the  unalterable  purpose  of  Councilor  Goethe 
that  his. son  should  study  law  at  a  university,  become, 
familiar  with  the  practice  at  one  of  the  imperial  chambers 
of  justice,  travel  abroad,  especially  in  Italy,  and  then 
return  to  Frankfort  and  garner  his  appropriate  reward 
of  civic  honor.  The  schooling  that  the  son  received  in 
pursuance  of  this  plan  was  irregular  and  unprofessional 
but  liberally  conceived.  He  was  not  sent  to  school  save  for 
a  short  time  while  the  family  residence  was  being  rebuilt,-" 
but  instructed  at  home — partly  by  his  father.  He  read 
copiously  in  Latin  authors  and  was  especially  drawn  to 
the  '  Metamorphoses  '  of  Ovid.  By  overhearing  his  sis- 
ter's lessons  he  picked  up  a  smattering  of  Italian.  He 
also  took  lessons  in  English  and  made  such  progress  that 
on  going  to  the  university  he  was  able  to  write  gossipy 
English  letters — letters  that  are  often  amusingly  bookish 
and  unidiomatic  but  sprightly  and  clever  nevertheless. 
He  even  undertook  to  poetize  in  English  and  boasted 
to  his  sister  of  '  English  verses  that  a  stone  would  weep.' 
Greek  was  not  seriously  studied,  tho  we  hear  of  attempts 
to   construe   the    Greek    Testament.     At   one    time   he 


12  GOETHE 

plunged  boldly  into  Hebrew,  being  led  thereto  by  his 
interest  in  the  book  of  books. 

Aside  from  these  preponderating  linguistic  studies 
Goethe's  preparatory  schooling  was  of  little  account. 
Natural  science,  which  was  to  claim  so  much  of  his  atten- 
tion in  after  years,  did  not  then  exist  as  a  serious  disci- 
pline for  the  youthful  mind.  In  mathematics  he  hardly 
got  beyond  the  rudiments  of  arithmetic  and  geometry, 
which  may  fairly  be  called  a  misfortune  for  the  future 
adversary  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  While  yet  a  mere  boy 
he  was  required  by  his  strenuous  father  to  grapple  with 
the  Corpus  Juris  and  the  Institutes  of  Roman  Law.  The 
^  result  was  a  providential  disgust  for  law-studies  and  a 
strengthened  resolution  to  be  a  poet. 

By  nature,  of  course,  Goethe  was  a  '  maker.'  In  early 
childhood  the  poetic  impulse  manifested  itself  as  a  fond- 
ness for  imaginative  constructions  of  different  kinds. 
His  favorite  diversions  were  the  marionette  theater,  the 
inventing  and  acting  of  little  plays,  and  listening  to  his 
mother's  fairy-tales,  from  which  it  was  but  a  step  to 
more  or  less  elaborate  compositions  of  his  own.  In  one 
of  Frau  Aja's  letters  there  is  a  charming  description  of 
the  story-telling  ardors  of  mother  and  son : 


There  I  would  sit  and  he  would  all  but  devour  me  with  his 
big  black  eyes;  and  if  anything  went  wrong  with  one  of  his 
favorites  I  could  see  him  bite  his  lips  to  keep  back  the  tears, 
while  the  angry  veins  would  stand  out  on  his  forehead.  Some- 
times he  would  interrupt  before  I  had  reached  my  turning- 
point  and  say:  'Now,  mother,  that  confounded  tailor  isn't 
going  to  get  the  princess,  is  he,  even  if  he  does  kill  the  giant?  ' 
And  if  ever  I  made  a  halt  and  postponed  the  catastrophe  until 
the  next  evening  I  could  be  sure  that  by  that  time  he  would 
have  everything  straightened  out ;  and  so  my  imagination,  when 


LINEAGE  AND  BOYHOOD  13 

it  no  longer  sufficed,  was  often  replaced  by  his.  And  then,  the 
next  evening,  when  I  would  guide  the  threads  of  fate  according 
to  his  indication  and  say,  '  You  guessed  it,'  he  would  be  all  on 
fire  and  one  could  see  his  little  heart  beat  under  his  neckcloth. 

When  he  had  invented  a  story  he  would  tell  it  to  his 
playmates,  making  himself  the  hero  of  wonderful  adven- 
tures and  so  mixing  up  the  natural  and  plausible  with 
the  fabulous  as  to  beguile  his  rapt  listeners  into  believ- 
ing that  it  was  true.  A  specimen  of  these  juvenile  tales 
entitled  the  '  New  Paris  '  is  given  in  the  second  book  of 
'Poetry  and  Truth,'  where  it  is  introduced  by  a  remark 
to  the  effect  that  in  this  bent  for  mystification  we  may 
recognize  the  presumption  of  the  poet,  who  utters  the 
most  improbable  things  and  demands  that  we  believe 
them.  Unfortunately  the  tale  is  in  the  unmistakable 
style  of  its  author's  later  years,  which  detracts  somewhat 
from  its  biographic  value.  At  the  most  it  only  shows 
us  the  kind  of  dream-world  in  which  his  boyish  imagi- 
nation loved  to  play.  It  is  not  the  dream-world  of 
German  folklore  but  a  kind  of  juvenile  adaptation  of 
Ovid.  Mercury  visits  the  dreaming  Wolfgang  and  gives 
him  three  wonderful  apples,  requesting  him  to  bestow 
them  on  the  three  handsomest  boys  in  town,  who  by  their 
aid  will  find  suitable  wives.  As  the  dreamer  holds  them 
in  his  hand  they  change  into  three  lovely  little  goddesses 
who  float  away  in  the  air,  leaving  a  Liliputian  nymph 
dancing  on  his  finger-tips.     And  so  on. 

In  the  course  of  this  tale  its  hero  calls  himself  '  dar- 
ling of  the  gods.'  Today  it  seems  as  if  the  gods  might 
have  done  better  for  their  darling  than  to  feed  his  child- 
ish imagination  on  such  poor  exotic  fruit.  But  the  gods 
have  their  own  way  of  providing  nourishment  for  imagi- 


14  GOETHE 

native  boyhood.  In  this  case  they  rehed  largely  on 
Luther's  bible.  But  there  were  also  the  so-called  folk- 
books — prose  tales  which  had  come  down  from  late- 
medieval  times  and  were  still  in  favor  with  the  plain 
people.  They  were  not  products  of  conscious  Hterary 
art  but  gems  in  the  rough  which  had  acquired  some 
polish  by  much  rolling  over  the  sands  of  time.  Two 
of  them  in  particular,  '  Doctor  Faust '  and  the  '  Wander- 
ing Jew,'  etched  themselves  indelibly  on  the  boy's  mind. 
And  then  there  was  Klopstock.  An  amusing  passage 
of  *  Poetry  and  Truth  '  tells  how  the  man  with  the  curi- 
ous name  (one  might  translate  it  Knockstick)  brought 
trouble  into  the  Goethe  household.  The  austere  Coun- 
cilor was  a  man  of  literary  bent  but  no  lover  of  innova- 
tion. According  to  his  light ,  poetry  was  a  matter  of 
good  common  sense  properly  set  forth  in  regular  rime 
with  more  or  less  of  rhetorical  point.  It  was  not  for 
him,  therefore,  to  lose  his  equanimity  over  the  opening 
cantos  of  the  '  Messiah  '  when  they  were  smuggled  into 
the  house  as  devotional  literature  by  a  pious  friend  of 
the  family.  But  Wolfgang  and  Cornelia  liked  the  high- 
sounding  verses  hugely  and  memorized  long  passages 
which  they  declaimed  at  each  other  for  the  sheer  fun  of 
the  thing.  This  went  on  for  a  while  clandestinely  with 
the  mother's  connivance.  Then,  one  Saturday  evening, 
as  paterfamilias  was  being  shaved,  the  barber  heard 
Cornelia  reciting  in  a  stage  whisper  from  behind  the 
stove.  She  was  doing  the  heart-rending  appeal  of  the 
devil  Adramalech  to  Satan: 

Monster,  I  worship  thee.     Listen,  thou  wretched  demon  of 

darkness, 
Help  me  who  suffer  the  pain  of  everlasting  perdition. 


LINEAGE  AND  BOYHOOD  15 

The  barber  became  so  excited  that  he  upset  his  lather 
on  his  customer's  shirt-front,  thus  furnishing  evidence 
enough  that  Klopstock  was  an  impostor.  *  Thus,'  says 
Goethe  in  relating  the  incident  many  years  later,  '  do 
children  and  the  common  people  convert  the  great  and 
memorable  into  sport,  even  into  farce;  and  indeed  how 
else  could  they  endure  it  ? ' 

It  does  not  appear  that  this  juvenile  interest  in  Klop- 
stock led  to  any  poetic  attempts  in  the  Klopstockian  style. 
The  young  twig  was  never  bent  in  that  direction  as  hap- 
pened in  the  case  of  young  Schiller  a  few  years  later.  It 
is  true  that  the  poem  '  Christ's  Descent  into  Hell,'  the 
first  of  Goethe's  poetic  productions  to  find  its  way  into 
print,  sounds  here  and  there  reminiscent  of  the  '  Mes- 
siah ' ;  but  on  the  other  hand  its  rimed  stanzas  are  not 
at  all  in  the  Klopstockian  vein.  Written  by  request  it 
is  what  is  quite  rightly  called  an  '  effort '  and  signifies 
nothing  more  than  its  author's  early  mastery  of  the  tech- 
nic  of  verse-making  in  the  ambitious  conventional  style. 
And  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  other  juvenilia  that 
have  chanced  to  be  preserved.  Partly  from  his  own  bent 
and  partly  in  pursuance  of  his  father's  educational  plan, 
the  boy  did  a  great  deal  of  imaginative  writing  both  in 
prose  and  in  verse.  He  acquired  local  renown  as  an  occa- 
sional poet  and  came  to  think  of  himself — so  it  appears 
from  a  subsequent  letter  to  his  sister — as  a  '  thunderer.' 
Large  literary  plans  flitted  before  his  mind  and  his 
ambition  was  boundless.  He  began  a  pious  biblical 
romance  called  '  Joseph.'  We  hear  also  of  a  tragedy 
'  Belshazzar,'  of  a  polyglot  novel  in  six  languages,  of 
a  pastoral  '  Amine,'  and  of  other  projects  whereof  noth- 
ing has  survived. 


i6  GOETHE 

When  he  was  fourteen  years  old  his  facility  in  verse- 
making  brought  him  to  grief.  He  fell  in  with  a  bevy 
of  young  folks,  belonging  to  the  so-called  lower  classes, 
who  induced  him  to  perpetrate  a  hoax  on  one  of  their 
number  by  inditing  imaginary  love-letters.  The  joke 
succeeded  and  presently  he  was  receiving  orders  for 
hymeneal  and  obituary  verses  which  he  executed  with 
dispatch.  The  revenue  so  obtained  was  spent  in  mild 
conviviality  with  the  new  friends,  one  of  whom  was 
the  girl  he  calls  Gretchen.  She  was  several  years  older 
than  he,  received  his  boyish  devotion  with  discreet  maid- 
enly reserve,  and  gave  him  good  sisterly  advice.  Pres- 
ently one  of  the  youngsters  whom  he  had  innocently 
recommended  to  his  grandfather  for  a  clerkship  com- 
mitted a  forgery.  There  was  an  exposure  and  great 
chagrin  befel  the  respectable  Goethe  household  when  its 
clever  scion  was  discovered  to  have  been  keeping  com- 
pany with  lawbreakers.  The  lad  himself  suffered  terri- 
bly until  they  told  him  that  Gretchen  had  been  fully 
exonerated  by  the  magistrate,  but  had  stated  formally 
in  writing  that  she  had  always  looked  on  him  as  a  child. 
That  was  the  beginning  of  a  cure  which  proceeded  rapidly 
under  the  ministrations  of  a  wise  tutor. 

In  after  life  the  love-affairs  of  fourteen  are  apt  to 
appear  negligible.  That  the  author  of  '  Poetry  and 
Truth '  devoted  so  much  space  to  this  one  was  probably 
due  to  a  feeling  on  his  part  that  it  had  really  counted 
for  something  in  his  early  development.  A  boy's  ideal- 
izing love,  which  had  stirred  only  what  was  best  in  his 
nature,  had  ended  in  an  agony  of  pain  and  mortification. 
The  experience  had  a  ripening  effect.  What  kind  of  a 
world  was  this  in  which  such  things  could  happen  ?    And 


LINEAGE  AND  BOYHOOD  17 

what  were  the  sources  of  consolation?  His  tutor  tried 
to  interest  him  in  philosophy  but  with  little  success. 
Somehow  it  did  not  seem  to  fit  the  case.  But  there  was 
a  comforter — one  to  whom  in  after  years  he  often 
resorted  in  time  of  trouble.  We  read  in  '  Poetry  and 
Truth  '  that  he  one  day  drew  his  tutor  to  a  secluded 
spot  in  the  woods  near  Frankfort.  The  elderly  friend 
made  an  erudite  remark  to  the  effect  that  the  ancient 
Germans  were  fond  of  communing  with  the  mystic 
divinity  of  the  forest.  Whereupon  the  boy  exclaimed 
ardently,  as  reported  in  the  style  of  a  later  time : 

Oh,  why  does  not  this  precious  spot  lie  in  the  depths  of  the 
wilderness?  Why  may  we  not  hedge  it  in  that  we  may  conse- 
crate it  and  ourselves  and  separate  both  from  the  world? 
Surely  there  is  no  more  beautiful  worship  than  that  for  which 
no  symbol  is  needed;  than  that  which  springs  from  the  heart 
simply  by  communion  with  nature. 

As  the  time  for  Wolfgang's  departure  for  the  uni- 
versity drew  near,  his  mind  revolted  more  and  more 
against  the  course  of  life  that  his  father  had  marked 
out  for  him.  His  private  wish  was  to  study  the  old 
humanities  at  Gottingen  and  then  prepare  for  an  aca- 
demic and  literary  career.  But  to  this  his  father  would 
not  listen  for  a  moment;  willy-nilly  it  was  to  be  Leipsic 
and  the  law.  The  aging  Councilor  saw  with  regret  that 
he  himself  had  cut  no  very  imposing  figure  in  the  world. 
He  hoped  that  his  son,  pursuing  a  similar  course  with 
better  gifts  and  a  better  start,  might  rise  much  higher. 
The  boy  listened  quietly  to  this  paternal  charting  of  his 
voyage  and  did  his  own  thinking.  He  had  begun  to  tire 
of  leading-strings  and  indeed  of  Frankfort  as  a  whole. 
The   strongest   attraction   of   the   place   was   his   sister 


i8  GOETHE 

Cornelia,  to  whom  he  had  drawn  closer  since  the  bitter 
experience  with  Gretchen.  But  what  are  the  ties  of  home 
and  kin  to  the  lad  of  sixteen  who  has  begun  to  hunger 
after  life  and  to  hear  the  beckoning  call  of  the  *  wondrous 
mother-age '  ? 


CHAPTER  II 
STUDENT  LIFE 

Wolfgang  arrived  in  Leipsic  early  in  October,  1765, 
and  was  soon  a  duly  matriculated  student  of  the  law. 

The  Leipsic  of  that  day  was  of  about  the  same  size 
as  Frankfort  but  less  provincial  and  more  pretentious. 
With  the  progress  of  the  Reformation  it  had  gradually 
become  the  center  of  the  German  book-trade  and,  at 
least  in  its  own  estimation,  the  intellectual  capital  of  Ger- 
many. Its  Upper  Saxon  dialect  was  now  the  literary 
standard,  so  that  authors  and  publishers  looked  to  Leipsic 
as  the  arbiter  of  correct  usage.  There  was  much  interest 
in  polite  literature.  Among  the  citizens  were  several 
rich  merchants  who  set  the  pace  for  the  social  life  of 
the  town.  Some  of  them  had  laid  out  gardens  in  the 
Italian  spirit  and  started  collections  of  art.  Naturally 
enough  the  inhabitants  of  the  little  Paris  on  the  Pleisse 
regarded  themselves  as  the  salt  of  the  German  earth — 
outside  their  precinct  was  Boeotia.  The  burghers  prided 
themselves  on  their  refinement.  Living  in  mute  servility 
under  a  despotic  government  in  which  they  had  no  share, 
they  gave  little  attention  to  politics.  They  followed  the 
fashions  of  Paris,  gossiped  in  French,  and  looked  on 
savoir  faire  as  the  queen  of  virtues.  In  Jena  or  Halle 
the  student  might  be  a  rowdy;  in  Leipsic  he  was  at  least 
supposed  to  be  a  gentleman. 

19 


20  GOETHE 

In  this  environment  Goethe  was  destined  to  spend 
nearly  three  years,  nominally  studying  law  but  in  reality 
browsing  along  the  by-ways  of  more  seductive  experi- 
ence. How  he  amused  himself,  and  with  what  effect 
on  his  mind,  can  be  read  most  instructively,  no  doubt, 
in  the  calm  retrospect  of  '  Poetry  and  Truth,'  but  with 
a  livelier  entertainment  in  his  contemporary  letters,  which 
are  at  first  as  light-hearted,  boyish,  and  gossipy  as  one 
could  wish. 

The  story  of  his  relations  to  the  university  can  be 
quickly  told.  He  set  out  bravely,  choosing  certain 
courses  in  law  and  others  under  the  faculty  of  philoso- 
phy. The  latter  were  such  as  he  thought  would  be  in 
the  line  of  his  literary  ambitions  or  good  for  what  used 
to  be  called  general  culture.  Meaning  to  be  very  dili- 
gent he  grappled  vigorously  with  Latin  that  he  might  be 
able  to  understand  the  lectures;  and  for  a  little  while, 
presumably,  he  took  notes  *  as  if  the  Holy  Ghost  were 
dictating.'  But  the  official  academic  pabulum  soon  palled 
upon  him.  He  failed  to  find  an  inspiring  .teacher  or  an 
appetizing  subject.  He  already  knew  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent what  the  law  professors  said,  having  heard  it  from 
his  father.  How  logic  and  philosophy  impressed  him 
»  can  be  guessed  from  Mephisto's  persiflage  in  '  Faust ' :  he 
had  hoped  that  logic  would  teach  him  to  weave  new 
thoughts,  and  he  found  on  trial  that  it  only  taught  him 
to  unravel  the  thoughts  he  already  had.  Philosophy, 
as  then  and  there  administered,  struck  him  as  a  matter 
of  big  words  that  no  one  could  understand. 

Even  the  famous  Gellert,  from  whom  he  had  hoped 
the  most,  disappointed  him.  Gellert  was  just  then  at 
the  zenith  of  his  peculiar  renown.     His  writings,  espe- 


STUDENT  LIFE  21 

cially  his  fables  and  poetic  tales,  were  in  high  repute  and 
were  held  by  many  to  exhibit  the  finest  flower  of  moral 
and  esthetic  culture.  Of  poetry  as  a  soul-stirring  art 
Gellert  had  scarcely  an  inkling,  and  he  seems  to  have 
been  in  the  habit  of  advising  students  against  it.  At 
least  he  so  advised  Goethe,  urging  instead  the  importance 
of  a  correct  and  elegant  prose.  While  universally  vener- 
ated as  a  benignant  and  helpful  personality,  he  was  clearly 
not  the  man  to  electrify  a  young  genius. 

The  natural  result  of  all  these  separate  disgusts  was 
a  general  disgust  with  academic  learning.  The  knowl- 
edge that  he  was  getting  did  not  seem  to  be  worth  the 
bother,  there  being  no  wisdom  in  it,  no  food  for  the 
soul;  it  was  nothing  but  opinion,  taste,  tradition,  with 
nowhere  any  bed-rock  of  first  principles.  This  reaction 
is  to  be  attributed  partly  to  the  dryness  of  the  lectures, 
but  rather  more  to  that  native  quality  of  Goethe's  mind 
which  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  assimilate  ready- 
made  knowledge.  He  was  not  born  to  thrive  on  predi- 
gested  food  or  to  chew  the  cud  of  tradition.  Hence  a 
severe  attack  of  bookworm's  dyspepsia,  which  went,  in 
the  fulness  of  time,  to  the  making  of  a  poet's  immortal 
poem.  For  the  present,  however,  the  case  of  young 
Goethe  had  little  resemblance  to  the  passionate  despair 
and  transcendental  yearnings  of  Faust.  It  was  much 
simpler :  the  lectures  bored  him  and  he  cut  them. 

A  more  racking  trial  presently  beset  him  in  the  tem- 
porary collapse  of  his  poetic  ambition.  With  the  brave 
confidence  of  sixteen  he  had  felt  himself  called  forth- 
with to  great  achievement.  He  worked  diligently  on 
his  ',B§lshazzar,'  doing  the  first  four  acts  in  alexandrines 
and  the  fifth  in  blank  verse — this  last  out  of  regard  for 


22  GOETHE 

'  the  Briton,'  whom  he  was  beginning  to  read  in  Dodd's 
'Beauties  of  Shakspere/  And  he  essayed  other  big  far- 
off  things.  But  no  one  gave  him  a  good  word.  Who- 
ever was  permitted  to  see  a  specimen  of  his  work  treated 
it  with  exasperating  levity.  Clodius,  the  recognized 
official  poet  of  the  university,  actually  laughed  at  one  of 
his  grandiloquent  effusions.  By  the  end  of  the  first 
semester  he  began  to  despair  of  his  talent  and  to  feel  at 
times  very  miserable.  At  last  he  decided  that  he  could 
never  be  a  poet  and  solemnly  burned  all  his  extant  pro- 
ductions. 

I  search  myself  and  can  not  find 
A  spark  of  worth  in  me, 

he  sang  in  a  lugubrious  English  poem  entitled  *  A  Song 
over  the  Unconfidence  toward  Myself.'  A  part  of  the 
English  letter  in  which  he  inclosed  the  verses — it  was 
written  to  Cornelia  on  May  ii,  1766 — runs  as  follows: 

Any  [a  few]  words  of  myself.  Sister,  I  am  a  foolish  boy. 
Thou  knowst  it;  why  should  I  say  it?  My  soul  is  changed  a 
little.  I  am  no  longer  a  thunderer  as  I  was  at  Francfort.  I 
make  [poetize]  no  more;  j'enrage.  I  am  as  meek!  as  meek! 
Hah,  thou  believest  it  not!  Many  time  I  become  a  melan- 
cholical  one.  I  know  not  whence  it  comes.  Then  I  look  on 
every  man  with  a  starring  [staring]  owl-like  countenance. 
Then  I  go  in  woods,  to  streams,  I  look  on  the  pyed  daisies,  on 
the  blue  violets,  I  hear  the  nightingales,  the  larks,  the  rooks, 
and  daws,  the  cuckow;  and  then  a  darkness  comes  down  on 
my  soul ;  a  darkness  as  thik  as  fogs  in  the  October  are. 

But  this  dismal  state  of  mind  did  not  last  very  long 
and  proved  to  be  a  blessing  in  disguise.  For  when  the 
sufferer  had  cured  himself  by  turning  his  trouble  into 


STUDENT  LIFE  23 

rime — his  own  trouble,  not  that  of  Belshazzar  or  any 
other  remote  worthy — it  gradually  came  over  him  that 
he  might  do  better  in  his  poetizing  if  he  were  to  write 
of  the  things,  however  humble,  that  actually  concerned 
him.  At  the  same  time  he  resolved  to  aim  at  greater 
simplicity  and  clarity  of  expression.  There  should  be 
no  more  rhetorical  soaring  into  worlds  unrealized,  noth- 
ing but  the  simple  rendering  of  his  own  experience.  Thus 
at  the  age  of  seventeen  he  was  already  preparing  for  the 
time  when  he  could  say  that  '  all  his  works  were  frag- 
ments of  a  great  confession.' 

And  experience  was  on  the  way.  In  the  spring  of 
1766  he  took  up  his  abode  in  the  house  of  a  wine- 
merchant  named  Schonkopf,  whose  wife  was  a  Frankfort 
woman.  There  was  a  pretty  daughter  Anna  Katherine — 
Kathchen,  Annette,  Nette — who  waited  on  the  table;  and 
she  poured  wine  so  delightfully  that  it  went  to  the  new 
boarder's  heart.  She  too  was  captivated  and  ere  long 
there  was  a  delirious  love-affair  in  progress.  But  its 
course  was  short  and  full  of  trouble.  There  came  jeal- 
ousies, quarrels,  reconciliations,  and  fresh  quarrels,  until 
Annette's  patience  gave  out.  Then  her  wo-begone  lover 
tried  to  win  her  back  by  acting  more  reasonably,  but 
found  that  it  was  too  late.  He  was  obliged  to  agree  that 
they  should  see  less  of  each  other  and  call  it  a  case  of 
friendship.  For  the  providentially  unhappy  ending  of 
this  romance  the  author  of  '  Poetry  and  Truth '  takes 
all  the  blame  on  himself.  And  his  memory  seems  not  to 
have  erred,  for  contemporary  letters  to  his  friend 
Behrisch  show  that  the  lover  of  Annette  now  and  then 
behaved  very  wildly  even  for  an  enamored  lad  of  eight- 
een.   Summing  up    the  case  judicially  in  March,  1768, 


24  GOETHE 

after  the  crisis  was  over,  he  wrote  to  his  friend :  '  She 
is  an  angel  and  I  am  a  fool.' 

This  Behrisch  was  a  lank  individual,  with  a  bent  for 
cynical  drollery7who  was  then  living  in  Leipsic  as  tutor 
to  a  young  nobleman.  Tho  much  older  than  Goethe  he 
took  a  fancy  to  him,  became  his  confidant,  and  perhaps 
gave  him  some  of  the  impressions  which  were  after- 
wards to  crystalize  under  the  name  of  Mephistopheles. 
It  was  Behrisch  who  undertook,  in  the  summer  of  1767, 
to  select  some  of  the  best  of  his  young  friend's  poetic 
effusions  and  make  a  calligraphic  copy  of  them.  It  was 
done  and  the  pretty  manuscript,  adorned  with  a  vignette 
and  duly  bound  in  leather,  was  entitled  '  Annette.'  After 
being  lost  to  mankind  for  more  than  a  century  it  came 
to  light  in  1895  ^"^  was  published  in  the  Deutsche  Rund- 
schau. There  are  two  short  tales  in  prose  and'abouF  a 
score  of  little  poems  in  the  fashion  of  an  era  that  was 
passing.  Some  of  them  have  a  pastoral  setting.  We 
read  of  enamored  shepherds  and  shepherdesses,  of  the 
arts  of  seduction,  of  the  dangers  that  beset  girls,  of 
the  blessedness  of  innocence  preserved.  Conventional, 
imitative,  shallow,  the  poems  convey  no  suggestion  of 
the  lyric  power  that  was  to  come.  They  tell  rather  of 
a  youth  who  would  fain  pose  as  an  expert  in  a  conven- 
tional ars  amandi.  ^ 

Anomef  poetic  precipitate  of  the  year  1767,  tho  it 
was  not  published  until  1806,  is  the  '  Lover's  Wayward 
Humor,'  a  one-act  play  in  alexandrine  verse.  The  love- 
lorn shepherd  Eridon  torments  his  sweetheart  Amine 
with  his  peevish  jealousy  until  her  life  is  miserable.  Her 
friend  Egle  resolves  to  give  him  a  lesson.  She  first 
chides  him  for  his  weakness,  then  assumes  a  sentimental, 


STUDENT  LIFE  25 

languishing  tone,  and  thus  craftily  lures  him  on  to  the 
point  of  giving  her  a  kiss.  With  this  sin  on  his  soul 
he  can  no  longer  cast  stones  at  Amine.  Bagatelle  as  it 
is,  one  can  still  read  Goethe's  first  play  with  pleasure 
on  account  of  his  clever  handling  of  the  alexandrine 
measure — a  form  which,  like  the  pastoral  fiction  itself, 
had  had  its  day  and  was  about  to  be  discarded  along  with 
other  things  borrowed  from  France. 

In  the  third  year  of  his  residence  in  Leipsic  Goethe 
became  somewhat  more  studious.  While  his  university 
lectures  still  continued  to  bore  him  as  often  as  he  gave 
them  a  chance,  he  found  real  inspiration  in  Oeser's  teach- 
ing of  art.  Oeser  was  an  amiable  man  in  the  fifties  who 
had  lately  come  over  from  Dresden  to  take  charge  of  the 
Leipsic  art  school.  For  years  he  had  enjoyed  the  friend- 
ship of  Winckelmann,  to  whom  the  prevailing  rococo  was 
an  abomination.  As  an  antidote  he  commended  the 
'  noble  simplicity  and  quiet  grandeur  '  of  Greek  sculpture. 
Oeser  had  imbibed  Winckelmann's  enthusiasm  for  Greek 
simplicity  and  soon  indoctrinated  Goethe  with  it.  Nearly 
all  Germans  at  that  time  took  it  for  granted  that  excel- 
lence in  art,  of  whatever  kind,  was  a  matter  of  imitating 
good  models;  the  voice  of  Herder  in  remote  Riga,  plead- 
ing for  originality,  sincerity,  and  national  savor,  was 
only  just  beginning  to  be  h^ard.  So  far  as  taste  is  con- 
cerned, Oeser  was  certainly  on  solid  ground  in  preferring 
the  Greek  style  to  the  decadent  and  meretricious  Rocaille, 
with  its  profusion  of  senseless  ornament.  At  the  same 
time  he  really  knew  but  little  about  the  Greeks  and  was 
himself  a  poor  practitioner.  The  best  work  left  by  him 
lacks  vigor  of  drawing  and  gives  an  impression  of  flabb 
prettiness  that  is  anything  but  Greek. 


a6  GOETHE 

Goethe  had  long  been  fond  of  sketching  and  much  prac- 
tice had  given  him  a  certain  faciHty.  Under  Oeser's 
tuition  the  subject  of  art  opened  before  him  in  its  wider 
bearings.  He  worked  faithfully  in  the  drawing-school, 
and  if  he  did  not  gain  much  in  technic  he  got  some  in- 
sight into  theories  and  principles  and  received  sympathetic 
guidance.  He  took  lessons  in  etching  and  spent  some 
time  in  Dresden  worshiping  at  the  shrine  of  art. 

And  so  he  might  have  drifted  along  for  another  year, 
perhaps,  but  for  a  grave  illness  which  befel  him.  It  was 
caused  by  a  recklessly  imprudent  way  of  living — not  vice 
but  bad  diet  and  a  general  disregard  of  hygiene — whereby 
he  sought  to  discipline  his  body  for  the  defects  of  his 
character.  There  is  some  evidence  that  in  these  days  he 
was  often  moody,  morose,  and  unsociable — a  trial  and 
a  mystery  to  his  friends.  One  night  in  July,  1768,  he 
was  awakened  by  a  bad  hemorrhage  which  was  at  first 
believed  to  portend  consumption.  It  looked  as  if  the 
end  were  at  hand.  Under  the  care  of  physician  and 
friends  he  rallied,  but  so  slowly  that  he  decided  to  go 
home  as  soon  as  his  strength  should  be  equal  to  the 
journey. 

On  the  3rd  of  September  the  shipwrecked  mariner 
reached  home — pale,  languid,  with  sunken  cheeks,  and 
with  no  doctor's  degree  to  glad  the  paternal  heart.  A 
month  later  he  wrote  that  he  was  as  well  as  a  man  could 
be  who  was  in  doubt  whether  he  had  consumption.  This 
anxiety  continued  to  haunt  him  till  near  the  end  of  the 
year,  when  he  received  final  assurance  that  his  lungs  were 
sound  and  that  the  seat  of  his  malady  was  the  stomach. 
Meanwhile,  in  December,  he  had  undergone  a  second 
attack  of  illness  with  sufferings  so  acute  that  his  life  was 


STUDENT  LIFE  27 

despaired  of.  When  he  began  to  recover  from  this  he 
was  again  prostrated.  And  so  he  spent  the  winter  and 
spring  as  an  invaHd  prisoner.  Even  after  that  his  con- 
valescence was  slow  and  tedious;  so  that  it  was  not  until 
April,  1770,  that  he  felt  well  enough  to  resume  his  uni- 
versity career. 

For  the  young  Goethe,  just  passing  from  the  green 
to  the  ripe  stage  of  glorious  youth,  this  year  and  a  half 
of  seclusion  brought  its  own  peculiar  gain.  It  was 
devoted  to  the  practice  of  drawing,  to  religious  medita- 
tion and  discussion,  to  abstruse  studies  in  alchemy  and 
magic,  and  latterly  to  literary  work.  There  was  time 
for  that  revaluation  of  values  which  comes  of  itself 
under  the  menace  of  impending  death.  There  was  time 
;'also  for  that  inward  digestion  of  experience  which  con- 
■^titutes  the  substance  of  spiritual  progress.  So  one  can 
understand  the  words  of  a  letter  of  December  30,  1768: 
*  Misfortune  is  good  too.  In  my  illness  I  have  learned 
much  that  I  could  otherwise  never  have  learned  in  my 
life.'  A  few  weeks  later  he  wrote  thus  in  the  course 
of  a  long  letter  to  Friederike  Oeser : 


My  present  mode  of  life  is  devoted  to  philosophy.  Shut  in, 
alone,  with  circle,  paper,  pen  and  ink,  and  two  books,  for  my 
entire  outfit !  And  in  this  simple  way  I  often  get  further  in  the 
knowledge  of  truth  than  others  with  their  library  science.  A 
great  scholar  is  rarely  a  great  philosopher,  and  he  who  labo- 
riously turns  the  leaves  of  many  books  despises  the  easy,  simple 
book  of  Nature.    And  yet  nothing  is  true  but  what  is  simple. 


Here  we  see  the  first  embryonic  stage  of  the  Faust 
situation:  a  lonely  scholar  disgusted  with  book-learning 
and  teased  by  the  idea  that  there  is  somewhere,  if  one 


28  GOETHE 

could  only  find  it,  a  direct  path  to  intuitive,  joy-giving 
knowledge. 

Among  the  intimate  friends  of  the  household  was  the 
saintly  Fraulein  von  Klettenberg,  a  cousin  of  Frau 
Goethe  and  the  leading  spirit  in  a  local  pietistic  cotery 
of  the  Herrnhuter  connection.  She  seems  to  have  been 
one  of  those  gentle  and  devout  natures  for  whom  religion 
is  the  only  reality;  and  her  religion  took  the  form  of  a 
calm,  imperturbable  trust  in  a  near  personal  Savior.  It 
is  her  character  which  is  more  or  less  reflected  in  the 
'  beautiful  soul '  of  '  Wilhelm  Meister.'  She  interested 
herself  deeply  in  Goethe's  spiritual  welfare  and  would 
have  had  him  make  his  peace  with  God  in  her  way.  She 
was  unable  to  produce  a  conviction  of  sin — he  felt  that 
the  account  between  him  and  his  Maker  was  fairly  even — 
but  her  serenity  of  mind,  as  of  one  fortified  against  all 
the  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to,  seemed  to  him  altogether 
enviable.  So  he  yielded  to  her  persuasions  and  was  con- 
verted— for  a  season — to  the  pietistic  faith.  He  attended 
the  conventicle,  partook  in  the  communion  service,  and 
learned  to  use  the  dialect  of  the  very  devout.  Ere  long, 
when  he  had  emerged  from  his  seclusion,  he  drifted  away 
from  these  associations,  but  an  indelible  impression  had 
been  made  on  his  character.  Henceforth  it  was  impos- 
sible for  him  to  think  otherwise  than  kindly  of  genuine 
religious  feeling.  The  mystic  in  him  had  been  deeply 
stirred  and  he  remained  to  the  end  of  his  days,  even 
while  men  were  calling  him  a  pagan,  deeply  sensitive 
to,  tho  not  at  all  an  exemplar  of,  what  is  called  the  beauty 
of  holiness. 

The  occult  studies  were  taken  up  at  the  instigation 
of  the  family  doctor,  who  was  a  member  of  the  pietistic 


STUDENT  LIFE  29 

circle  and  also  a  believer  in  alchemy.  He  made  much 
ado  about  a  certain  powder  that  he  had  prepared,  not 
without  moral  ingredients,  but  dared  not  use  for  fear 
of  the  law.  Their  curiosity  excited  by  the  doctor's  talk, 
mother  and  son  and  the  saintly  Fraulein  took  up  the 
study  of  Welling's  *  Opus  Mago-Cabbalisticum,'  that 
they  might  learn  how  to  make  the  wonderful  panacea. 
Welling's  book  was  then  quite  new,  tho  its  pedigree,  as 
Goethe  observes,  could  be  traced  back  to  Neo-Platonism. 
It  is  a  dreary,  inconsecutive  hodge-podge  of  magic, 
astrology,  alchemy,  cabalism,  and  spiritism,  all  set  forth 
with  pious  unction  and  fortified  with  numerous  quota- 
tions from  scripture.  The  study  of  Welling  had  already 
begun  when  one  day  the  patient  became  alarmingly  worse. 
The  frightened  mother  declared  that  now  if  ever  was 
the  time  for  the  powder.  It  was  administered  and  the 
sufferer  got  better.  This  naturally  quickened  the  trio's 
interest  in  their  cabalistic  chemistry.  Branching  out 
from  Welling,  Goethe  read  the  authors  cited  by  him,  and 
when  warm  weather  came  he  set  up  a  laboratory  in  the 
attic  and  undertook  to  perform  the  experiments  set  forth 
in  the  books. 

In  later  years  he  thought  he  had  got  some  good  from 
these  pursuits :  if  he  had  not  discovered  the  philosopher's 
stone  he  had  at  least  found  out  what  certain  substances 
looked  like.  But  the  profit,  such  as  it  was,  inured  to  the 
poet  of  '  Faust '  rather  than  to  the  man  of  science,  who 
paid  little  attention  to  chemistry  even  after  Lavoi- 
sier had  laid  the  new  foundations.  It  was  wretched 
stuff  that  he  read — perhaps  the  very  craziest  chapter  in 
the  history  of  European  thought — but  out  of  it  he  some- 
how distilled   Faust's  wonderful  dream  of  an  ecstatic 


f\ 


30  GOETHE 

spirit-life  to  be  attained  by  the  aid  of  natural  magic. 
But  he  also  read  other  and  saner  books  than  those  of 
the  alchemists.  He  took  up  Gottfried  Arnold's  bulky 
*  History  of  the  Church  and  of  Heresy '  and  was  moved 
by  it  to  a  kindly  feeling  for  some  of  the  great  heretics. 
The  idea  came  home  to  him  that  they  were  not  bad  men 
and  false  teachers,  but  good  men  of  superior  courage 
and  insight.  The  type  of  the  misunderstood  searcher 
after  truth  began  to  haunt  his  imagination  and  to  blend 
with  that  of  the  daring  votary  of  natural  magic. 

As  his  health  improved  his  literary  browsing  took  a 
wide  range  from  muddy  old  speculation  to  the  newest 
thing  out.  We  have  his  '  Ephemerides/  a  sort  of  note- 
book or  diary  of  reading,  begun  in  January,  1770.  It 
consists  of  book-titles  and  quotations,  with  comments 
of  his  own  in  German,  French,  and  Latin.  Never  did 
convalescent  poet  feed  on  stranger  food.  Along  with 
cryptic  medical  prescriptions  and  curious  maunderings 
of  Paracelsus  we  find  excerpts  from  Lucan,  Quintilian, 
Cicero,  Livy,  Pliny  the  Elder,  and  other  Roman  writers. 
Here  is  an  extract  from  Ayrer's  *  Processus  Juris,' 
wherein  Lucifer  complains  of  his  wrongs  at  the  hands 
of  Christ;  there  a  note  from  a  new  work  on  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  fable  and  the  Marchen;  a  string 
of  satirical  verses  from  Voltaire;  jottings  from  the  latest 
Mercure  de  France;  a  description  of  an  aurora  borealis; 
quasi-scientific  notes  on  spiders;  quotations  from  Rous- 
seau, Shakspere,  and  Lessing;  an  extended  analysis  of 
Mendelssohn's  '  Phaedo ' ;  a  defense  of  Giordano  Bruno 
,  against  Bayle's  Dictionary.    And  so  on  in  endless  variety. 

The  literary  work  above  referred  to  consisted  in  bring- 
ing out  a  small  collection  of  lyric  poems  and  complet- 


STUDENT  LIFE  31 

ing  a  second  play  in  alexandrines,  the  *  Fellow-Culprits.' 
The  former,  entitled  simply  '  New  Songs,'  was  published 
anonymously,  with  music  by  a  Leipsic  friend  named 
Breitkopf,  in  the  autumn  of  1769.  There  were  twenty 
of  them  in  all.  They  had  mostly  been  lived  in  Leipsic 
and  naturally  have  much  the  same  savor  as  the 
'Annette '  poems  spoken  of  above.  But  they  are  better 
technically  and  more  mature  on  the  intellectual  side. 
Their  author  thought  them  artless  and  likened  them  to 
wild  flowers ;  but  as  one  reads  them  now  they  seem  begot- 
ten of  critical  reflection  rather  than  of  spontaneous  feel- 
ing. The  young  lyrist  needed  the  schooling  of  the  folk- 
song. 

The  '  Fellow-^ulpxitsJ  is  a  sort  of  rogue's  comedy 
in  respectable  middle-class  society.  We  have  a  shabby 
quartet  consisting  of  an  inquisitive  inn-keeper,  his  worth- 
less son-in-law,  his  indiscreet,  disillusioned  daughter,  and 
her  former  sentimental  lover,  who  is  no  better  than  he 
should  be.  The  plot  involves  them  all  in  a  network  of 
suspicions,  charges,  and  counter-charges,  and  in  the  end 
it  comes  out  that  they  are  all  alike  poor  miserable  sinners. 
No  one  of  them  can  cast  a  stone  at  another.  The  play 
was  not  published  until  1787.  It  is  sprightly  and  amus- 
ing— quite  the  thing  for  the  amateur  stage  at  Weimar, 
where  Goethe  several  times  played  the  role  of  Alceste, 
the  reprobate  lover.  But  it  is  not  at  all  edifying,  nor 
is  it  related  in  any  obvious  way  to  its  author's  experi- 
ence. How  such  a  play  came  to  be  written  just  at  this 
time  is  a  puzzling  question  which  is  not  fully  cleared  up 
by  the  account  of  its  origin  in  '  Poetry  and  Truth.' 

In  the  spring  of  1770  Goethe  followed  his  star  to 
Strassburg.    His  larger  purpose  was  to  learn  and  enjoy 


32  GOETHE 

as  much  of  life  as  possible,  that  he  might  become  wise 
in  the  ways  thereof.  Incidentally  he  intended  to  finish 
his  study  of  the  law  at  a  university  where  the  subject 
was  said  to  be  handled  in  a  more  practical  way  than  at 
Leipsic,  and  then  to  spend  some  time  in  Paris.  After 
that  his  plans  were  vague,  for  the  career  of  a  lawyer 
had  never  filled  his  imagination.  His  heart  was  in  litera- 
ture, and  France  was  still  the  source  of  light  and  leading, 
albeit  of  late  the  signs  of  insurgency  had  been  coming 
thick  and  fast.  The  victories  of  the  King  of  Prussia 
in  the  Seven  Years'  War,  Lessing's  trenchant  criticism 
in  his  Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  Klopstock's  poetry,  the 
inrushing  current  from  England,  the  oracular  voice  of 
Herder, — all  this  was  fast  making  an  end  of  French 
prestige.  One  may  even  reckon  in  Rousseau;  for  while 
he  used  the  French  language  he  was  not  a  Frenchman, 
and  his  message  was  in  its  essence  an  assault  on  French 
civilization. 

What  actually  happened  to  Goethe  on  going  to  the 
then  French  city  of  Strassburg — it  had  belonged  to 
France  since  1681 — was  to  have  his  French  ideals  rudely 
shattered,  to  kindle  with  enthusiasm  for  the  things  of 
the  fatherland,  and  to  find  himself  as  a  German  poet. 
On  arriving  he  made  it  his  first  concern  to  look  out  over 
the  land  from  the  lofty  platform  of  the  high-towering 
minster.  His  autobiography  dwells  warmly  on  the  charm 
of  the  Alsatian  landscape  as  it  spread  out  before  him. 
And  the  great  church  made  a  deep  impression  too — an 
impression  of  something  majestic,  awe-inspiring,  incom- 
mensurable. He  could  not  account  for  his  own  emotions. 
This  was  the  first  Gothic  cathedral  he  had  seen,  and 
Gothic  was  then  a  synonym   for  barbarous.     He  had 


STUDENT  LIFE  33 

expected  to  see  a  '  mis-shapen,  bristling  monster/  and 
he  found  a  harmonious  and  mysteriously  impressive  work 
of  art.  H^  began  to  study,  measure,  and  compare,  return- 
ing again  and  again  to  the  fascinating  task.  The  result 
was  presently  (1772)  a  fervid  little  essay  in  defense  of 
the  Gothic  style,  which  he  erroneously  supposed  to  be 
German.  It  is  one  of  the  early  signs  of  the  gathering 
reaction  in  favor  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  effect  of  the  cathedral,  the  work  of  a  German 
builder  and  itself  believed  by  Goethe  to  be  an  example 
of  German  art,  was  to  beget  a  feeling  of  pride  in  his 
own  nationality,  with  a  corresponding  dislike  of  France. 
This  feeling  was  destined  to  be  greatly  intensified  by 
Herder,  but  even  before  Herder's  arrival  in  Strassburg 
the  way  was  being  prepared  for  him.  In  May  Marie 
Antoinette  passed  through  the  town  on  her  way  to  become 
the  queen  of  France.  By  way  of  royal  welcome  on  the 
border  of  her  kingdom  the  officials  erected  a  sort  of 
pleasure-castle  on  an  island  in  the  Rhine,  and  decorated 
some  of  the  rooms  with  tapestries  made  after  car- 
toons of  Raphael.  The  young  student  of  things-in- 
general  was  delighted  with  them  until  he  came  across 
some  large  designs  representing  scenes  from  the  life 
of  Medea,  most  unhappy  and  ill-fated  of  wives.  This 
seemed  to  him  an  ominous  horror.  Where  in  the  world 
was  that  inerrant  French  taste?  So  strongly  did  he  feel 
on  the  subject  that  he  gave  vent  to  his  emotions  in  some 
French  verses  that  were  mercilessly  criticized  by  a  French 
fellow-boarder.  Whereupon  he  gave  up  in  disgust  his 
attempts  at  French  verse-making.  The  pique  went 
farther.  He  and  his  German  comrades,  tired  of  being 
constantly  nagged  for  the  bad  French  they  spoke  at  table. 


34  GOETHE 

resolved  to  eschew  that  tongue  altogether  and  henceforth 
to  stand  on  their  dignity  as  Germans.  From  this  time 
one  notices  that  Goethe's  letters  are  written  in  German 
only,  and  that  his  language  becomes  more  and  more  idio- 
matic, vibrant,  tense  with  his  own  personal  Eigenart. 

In  the  fall  Herder  came  to  Strassburg — a  radical 
dreamer  at  war  wdth  the  spirit  of  the  age,  his  mind  teem- 
ing with  large  literary  plans  and  with  prophetic  visions 
of  a  revitalized  poetry,  philosophy,  religion,  and  edu- 
cation. He  was  nearly  six  years  older  than  Goethe. 
After  leaving  the  university  of  Konigsberg  he  had  settled 
in  Riga,  where  he  quickly  won  local  fame  as  a  teacher 
and  preacher,  and  more  than  local  fame  as  a  literary 
critic.  He  had  then  left  Russia,  spent  a  few  months  in 
France  without  learning  to  like  it,  and  now  came  to 
Strassburg  to  be  treated  for  ajacrimal^fistula.  Goethe 
called  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  noted  stranger  and  the 
call  was  the  beginning  of  a  memorable  friendship. 

At  first  the  profit  naturally  fell  mainly  to  the  younger 
man,  who  had  never  before  come  into  contact  with  so 
strong  and  original  a  personality.  His  attitude  was  that 
of  a  pupil  toward  a  teacher.  Strangely  lured  by  Herder's 
knowledge  and  self-assurance,  he  came  again  and  again 
and  was  soon  wrestling  with  him — to  use  his  own  ex- 
pression— as  Jacob  wrestled  with  the  Lord.  The  evi- 
dence goes  to  show  that  Herder  was  difficult  in  social 
intercourse.  He  could  be  very  amiable  and  usually  was 
so,  but  at  times  he  was  intolerant  and  sarcastic.  Just 
now  his  natural  irritability  was  increased  by  the  suffer- 
ing incident  to  the  tedious  and  painful  treatment  of  his 
eye.  Time  dragged  on  for  half  a  year  before  he  was 
able  to  get  away.     During  these  weary  months  Goethe 


STUDENT  LIFE  35 

spent  a  great  deal  of  time  with  him,  bearing  much  from 
Herder's  occasional  ill-humor,  but  conscious  of  a  gain 
that  more  than  made  up  for  all  such  minor  trials.  He 
was  taking  in  the  gospel  of  a  new  era. 

Roughly  defined  it  was  the  gospel  of  a  return  to  nature, 
nature  being  conceived  as  a  pure  f ountaiiT^Jonutecr  By" 
civilization.  By  his  reading  of  Rousseau,  his  study  of 
Greek  and  Hebrew  poetry,  of  Shakspere,  Ossian,  and 
Percy's  '  Reliques,'  Herder  had  come  to  feel  that  the 
glorified  Age  of  Reason  was  really  anjige^of  degeneracy. 
In  his  recently  published  '  Fragments  '  he  had  berated 
his  countrymen  for  trying  to  imitate  the  Greeks  and 
Romans.  He  had  undertaken  to  show  by  careful  analysis 
that  realj)oetry  is  always  born  of  conditions — local,  tem- 
poral, religious,  ethnic,  linguistic — that  come  just  once 
and  never  again.  How  futile  and  absurd,  then,  for  Ger- 
mans to  try  to  be  other  than  Germans  and  to  spend  their 
days  debating  about  the  best  models  for  imitation! 
Poetry,  he  contended,  was  singing  nature,  the  mother- 
language  of  mankind.  Its  grand  merit  was  sincerity. 
The  more  it  smelt  of  the  soil  the  better.  The  greatest 
poets  were  those  who  had  expressed  most  fully  the  life 
of  their  own  time  and  place.  In  his  '  Critical  Forests  ' 
he  had  set  forth  the — rather  dubious — doctrine  that  the 
distinguishing  mark  of  poetry  as  an  art  is  energy  of 
expression. 

Such  ideas,  poured  into  the  listening  ear  of  Goethe, 
produced  a  lively  ferment  of  thought  which  soon  revo- 
lutionized his  whole  way  of  thinking.  Like  the  light 
that  appeared  to  Saul  of  Tarsus,  it  made  a  new  man  of 
him  that  saw  it.  So  we  quite  understand  why  the  author 
of  '  Poetry  and  Truth,'  writing  nearly  half  a  century 


36  GOETHE 

afterwards,  should  have  cherished  a  lively  sense  of  his 
early  indebtedness  to  Herder.  Nor  is  it  greatly  to  be 
wondered  at  that  modern  writers  by  the  score,  having 
such  unimpeachable  authority,  should  also  make  much 
of  this  indebtedness  and  write  sometimes  as  if  Herder 
had  been  the  making  of  Goethe.  But  it  is  quite  possible 
to  make  too  much  of  the  younger  man's  pupilage  and  to 
credit  his  teacher  too  heavily.  For  after  all,  doctrine 
or  a  change  of  doctrine  never  yet  made  a  poet  and  genius 
is  not  communicable.  When,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  the 
young  law-student  whom  Herder  coached  magisterially 
for  half  a  year  without  ever  mentioning  him  in  his  letters 
or  getting  any  inkling  that  the  youth  was  marked  for 
immortality, — when  Goethe  came  to  produce  notable 
works  of  the  imagination  he  went  his  own  way  and 
rested  firmly  on  his  own  endowment.  He  neither 
imitated  Herder  as  young  writers  imitate  a  master — he 
was  an  artist  born  and  Herder  everything  but  an  artist — 
nor  did  he  lean  on  him  for  counsel,  encouragement,  or 
suggestion.  We  may  be  quite  sure  that  he  would  have 
found  his  appointed  way  without  Herder,  tho  peradven- 
ture  a  little  more  slowly. 

The  conversations  turned  largely  on  Homer,  Shak- 
spere,  and  Ossian.  What  Herder  admired  in  Homer 
was  not  the  infallible  artistry  that  had  so  impressed 
Lessing;  it  was  rather  the  old  bard's  full-orbed  Greek- 
ness.  The  Homeric  poems  mirrored  the  life  of  a  peculiar 
and  wonderful  people  at  a  fascinating  period  of  its  his- 
tory. To  be  able  to  read  Homer  Goethe  returned  to  his 
well-nigh  forgotten  Greek,  teaching  himself  by  a  method 
of  his  own  devising.  From  this  time  on  he  remained  a 
faithful  lover  of  the  Greeks.     Again,   Herder's  Shak- 


STUDENT  LIFE  37 

spere  was  not  the  self-revealing  poet,  still  less  the  Lon- 
don playwright  calculating  effects  for  an  audience  in  a 
theater;  he  was  Elizabethan  England  in  all  the  fulness 
of  its  many-sided  life.  Goethe  now  came  back  to  Shak- 
spere  with  a  new  feeling  which  amounted  to  sheer  intoxi- 
cation. He  felt,  so  he  said,  like  a  Wind  man  who  had 
suddenly  received  sight.  What  were  the  rules  of  Aris- 
totle, or  any  other  rules,  in  the  presence  of  such  abound- 
ing vitality,  such  opulence  of  matter,  such  mighty 
effectiveness  ? 

As  for  Macpherson's  Ossian,  Herder  had  wrongly 
taken  that  at  its  face  value  as  a  genuine  monument  of 
ancient  Celtic  poetry.  He  imparted  his  admiration  to 
Goethe,  whose  mind  long  continued  to  be  haunted  by 
Ossianic  scenes  and  imagery.  Finally,  there  was  the 
popular  ballad.  Herder  had  become  deeply  interested 
in  the  poetry  of  primitive  and  unlettered  folk,  and  of 
course  regarded  it  as  better  than  any  of  the  artificial 
products  of  a  Frenchified  civilization.  Here  again  he 
found  an  eager  listener  in  Goethe,  who  presently  took 
occasion,  in  one  of  his  rambles,  to  collect  a  dozen  folk- 
songs. He  caught  them,  as  he  wrote  excitedly  to  Herder, 
from  the  mouths  of  ancient  grandams,  with  the  old  tunes, 
'  just  as  God  had  made  them.*  With  great  glee  he  turned 
them  over  to  Herder,  who  included  them  in  his  collection 
published  a  few  years  later.  In  the  course  of  time  Goethe 
did  much  that  was  more  memorable  than  this  little  ex- 
ploit of  which  he  was  so  proud  at  the  time,  but  it  is  well 
enough  to  remember  that  he  was  the  first  German  who 
actually  went  among  the  '  folk '  to  collect  their  songs. 
Herder  was  getting  his  from  books. 

Such  tension  of  feeling  over  so  simple  a  matter  as  a 

54402 


/8  GOETHE 

few  folksongs — and  the  specimens  he  had  picked  up  were 
not  particularly  good  of  their  kind — shows  how  Goethe 
had  been  keyed  up  by  his  intercourse  with  Herder.  Not 
only  had  he  got  hold  of  some  new  ideas  with  regard  to 
the  nature  of  poetry  and  the  criteria  of  its  excellence, 
but  he  had  become  charged  with  electricity.  And  yet 
it  was  all  gray  theory  in  comparison  with  the  golden 
tree  of  life  that  he  found  blooming  in  the  village  of 
Sesenheim.  A  peculiar  charm  invests  that  portion  of 
*  Poetry  and  Truth  '  in  which  Goethe  tells  of  his  brief 
summer  romance  with  Friederike  Brion.  There,  where 
the  tale  is  told  with  exquisite  art  by  one  who  knew  it  as 
no  one  else  can  possibly  know  it,  is  the  place  to  read  it; 
the  modern  biographer  should  stay  his  hand.  Suffice 
it  to  say  that  Goethe  found  the  village  maid  very  bewitch- 
ing in  her  country  home,  loved  her,  won  her  love,  and 
spent  much  time  with  her  in  the  early  summer  of  1771. 
With  quite  too  little  thought  of  the  inevitable  parting  he 
gave  himself  up  to  the  delicious  idyl,  and  then,  when 
the  time  came  for  him  to  go  home,  bade  farewell  to  the 
sorrowing  maid  and  took  himself  out  of  her  life. 

For  this  act  of  unromantic  perfidy  his  conscience  tor- 
mented him.  What  he  did  at  last,  after  drifting  too 
long  with  the  current  of  passion,  was  the  right  thing  to 
do;  for  a  marriage  would  have  been  an  act  of  senti- 
mental folly,  for  her  as  well  as  for  him.  They  were 
not  well  mated  for  the  prose  of  life.  But  while  the 
common  sense  of  mankind  makes  little  of  such  a  fault, 
and  nothing  at  all  when  it  is  the  woman  who  retreats, 
Goethe  himself  felt  that  he  had  played  a  shabby  part. 
He  says  as  much  in  his  autobiography,  and  letters  written 
at  the  time  betray  a  remorseful  state  of  mind,  which, 


STUDENT  LIFE  39 

however,  did  not  last  very  long.  He  expiated  artisti- 
cally. For  several  years  to  come  his  scheme  of  a  tragic 
situation  regularly  included  a  girl  deserted  by  her  lover. 
Thus  the  village  maid  became  the  muse  of  the  new-born 
poet.^ 

^  Certain  writers  appear  to  make  a  virtue  of  believing  that  the 
relation  of  Goethe  and  Friederike  was  much  less  idyllic  than  the 
famous  tenth  book  of  '  Poetry  and  Truth '  would  lead  one  to  sup- 
pose;  in  short,  that  it  was  very  like  the  relation  of  Faust  and 
Gretchen.  But  the  evidence  adduced  is  too  vague  and  untrust- 
worthy to  compel  such  a  conclusion.  It  is  largely  a  question  of 
what  one  wishes  to  believe.  An  outstanding  fact  of  great  moment 
is  that  in  1779  Goethe  revisited  Sesenheim  and  was  received  with 
delight  by  the  entire  Brion  family. 


CHAPTER  III 
YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS 

In  August,  1 77 1,  Goethe  returned  to  Frankfort,  where 
he  soon  took  up  the  practice  of  Holy  Roman  law.  It 
was  a  perfunctory  business  carried  on  to  please  his 
father.  At  Strassburg  he  had  given  rather  more  atten- 
tion to  medicine  than  to  law,  so  that  an  awkward  situa- 
tion arose  when  he  came  to  try  for  his  degree.  It  was 
open  to  him  either  to  print  and  defend  a  Latin  dis- 
sertation for  the  degree  of  doctor,  or  to  dispute  on  a  few 
short  theses  for  that  of  licentiate,  which  would  permit 
him  to  practice.  Conscious  of  weakness  in  jurisprudence 
and  having  a  nervous  dread  of  publishing  anything  over 
his  own  name,  he  would  have  preferred  the  easier  way ; 
but  his  father  demanded  that  he  produce  a  solid  tractate. 
So,  being  a  fair  Latinist,  he  undertook  to  solve  his 
problem  by  writing  on  a  subject  that  would  call  for  but 
little  research  and  no  great  display  of  learning.  In  an 
essay  entitled  DeJLegislatoribus,  which  has  not  been  pre- 
served, he  propose?  a  reme3y  for  all  friction  between 
church  and  state:  the  secular  power,  while  leaving  the 
individual  free  in  matters  of  faith  and  conscience,  was 
to  establish  a  form  of  public  worship  and  compel  every- 
body to  observe  it. 

It  was  a  relief  when  he  was  officially  informed,  after 
profuse  compliments,  that  his  production  was  not  just 

40 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS        41 

the  thing  to  be  printed  as  an  academic  dissertation.  So 
he  now  wrote  out  a  number  of  positiones  juris — these 
have  been  preserved  and  some  of  them  are  mere  legal 
commonplaces — and  easily  passed  the  test  required  of  a 
Hcentiate.  The  title  of  doctor,  by  which  he  was  hence- 
forth known,  was  given  him  by  his  friends  in  Frankfort, 
not  by  the  faculty  of  Strassburg  University. 

Doctor  Goethe  was  now  twenty-two  years  old,  blest 
with  abounding  vitality,  free  from  pecuniary  cares,  and 
unfettered  by  any  routine  whatsoever.  There  was  time 
for  friendship,  for  study,  for  poetizing,  or  for  thinking 
over  his  literary  projects.  '  Gotz  von  Berlichingen '  and 
*  Faust '  were  already  occupymg  his  thoughts,  along  with 
a  '  Julius  Caesar.'  Within  his  own  four  walls  life  was 
a  little  less  somber  than  it  had  been  before.  Councilor 
Goethe  had  become  partly  reconciled  to  the  erratic  ways 
of  his  son  and  now  looked  forward  to  seeing  him  a 
shining  light  of  jurisprudence.  His  mother  was  tenderly 
devoted  to  him,  and  his  affection  for  his  sister  was  such 
that  he  felt  a  pang  of  jealousy  when  he  heard  that  she 
was  to  marry  his  old  friend  Georg  Schlosser. 

Nevertheless  Frankfort  seemed  to  him  at  first  very 
dull,  and  his  thoughts  were  often  with  his  Alsatian 
friends  and  especially  with  the  wronged  Friederike.  In 
a  letter  he  refers  to  his  native  place  as  a  sorry  hole,  a 
^/wwca.  To  let  in  the  light  on  the  cave-dwellers  he 
planned  a  Shakspere  celebration  for  the  14th  of  October. 
Herder,  who  had  now  settled  in  Biickeburg,  was  invited 
under  promise  that  his  health  should  be  drunk  next  to 
that  of  the  '  Will  of  all  Wills.'  For  this  occasion  Goethe 
wrote  a  fervid  address  in  which  he  praised  Shakspere 
as  a  '  beautiful  curiosity-box  wherein  the  history  of  the 


42  GOETHE 

world,  drawn  by  the  invisible  thread  of  time,  moves  past 
before  our  eyes.'  In  a  burst  of  enthusiasm  he  declared, 
as  if  he  were  already  an  experienced  playwright,  that 
he  had  not  hesitated  a  moment  to  give  up  the  regular 
drama  with  its  clogging  unities.  He  had  rushed  out  of 
the  prison-cave  of  convention  and  suddenly  found  that 
he  had  hands  and  feet. 

It  was  in  this  frame  of  mind  that  he  set  about  '  drama- 
tizing '  the  autobiography  of  Gotz  von  Berlichingen.  He 
had  discussed  the  matter  with  Cornelia  until  she  became 
impatient  of  so  much  talk  and  bade  him  go  to  work  and 
write  out  what  was  in  his  mind.  He  began  about  the 
middle  of  November — without  a  plan  or  a  thought  of 
the  stage.  In  a  short  time  he  was  completely  absorbed 
in  his  enterprise,  having  '  forgotten  Homer,  Shakspere, 
and  everything,'  save  the  scenes  and  characters  that  were 
taking  shape  under  his  hands.  He  felt  that  he  was 
'  dramatizing  the  history  of  one  of  the  noblest  of  Ger- 
mans and  rescuing  the  memory  of  a  good  man.'  By 
the  end  of  the  year  he  had  finished  the  manuscript  and 
dispatched  a  copy  to  Herder,  who  replied  coolly — more 
coolly  than  he  actually  felt — :  '  Shakspere  has  completely 
spoiled  you.'  But  before  receiving  this  opinion  Goethe 
himself  had  privately  decided  that  his  '  Gottfried  von 
Berlichingen '  ^  would  not  do  for  publication.  It  would 
have  to  be  melted  up  and  recast.  In  fact  he  had  never 
thought  of  publication.  It  was  only  a  '  sketch '  that  he 
had  thrown  off  for  his  own  private  satisfaction. 

In  our  day  the  calm  student  of  history  can  hardly  dis- 

^  In  the  title  of  the  original  draft,  which  was  not  published  until 
1832,  the  hero  is  called  Gottfried.  In  the  version  published  in  1773 
his  name  is  Gotz. 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS        43 

cover  one  of  the  noblest  of  Germans  in  Gotz  von  Ber- 
lichingen.  He  was  a  typical  robber  knight  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  who  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  life  in 
feudal  forays  which  were  mostly  undertaken  for  booty  or 
ransom  or  to  avenge  old  scores.  His  raids  and  plunder- 
ing expeditions  were  in  open  defiance  of  imperial  law 
(the  Landfriede) ,  which  was  at  that  time  the  only  force 
making  for  public  order.  That  he  was  a  sturdy  fighter 
is  certain,  but  of  his  motives  the  best  that  can  be  said  is 
that  he  was  no  worse  than  his  class.  But  Goethe's  imagi- 
nation, romantically  enamored  of  the  brave  days  of  old, 
saw  in  him  a  type  of  the  strong  self-helper  in  an  age  of 
anarchy.  Taking  sides  with  the  outlaw  against  the  law, 
as  did  the  young  Schiller  and  the  young  Ibsen  after  him, 
he  imagined  Gotz  as  a  towering  individualist  fighting  in 
a  good  cause  and  dying  a  martyr  to  liberty.  What  most 
concerned  him,  however,  was  to  portray  the  fulness  of 
German  life  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Incidentally  he 
punished  himself  by  inventing  a  perfidious  lover  and 
killing  him  off  with  poison.  His  achievement  was  not  a 
play  such  as  any  well-schooled  playwright  could  approve, 
but  the  genius  of  a  new  epoch  was  in  it. 

Hardly  was  *  Gottfried  von  Berlichingen '  finished  be- 
fore its  author  was  musing  over  a  similarly  inclusive  play 
on  the  subject  of  Socrates.  He  took  up  the  study  of 
Elato  and  Xenopjion,  and  they  '  opened  his  eyes  to  his 
own  unworthiness.'  Then  he  turned  to  Anacreon  and 
Theocritus  and  finally  grappled  with  the  Theban  eagle. 
The  study  of  Pindar  and  the  effort  to  translate  him — a 
version  of  the  fifth  Olympic  ode  has  been  preserved — 
.  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  metrical  form  of 
several  poems  dating  from  1772  and  1773  and  consisting 


44  GOETHE 

of  unrimed  lines  of  varying  length.  Along  with  these 
Greek  studies  he  translated  parts  of  *  Ossian '  into  lofty 
rhythmic  prose  and  began  a  play  about  Mahomet.  It 
/was  a  time  of  confused  groping  and  experimentation,  of 
turbulent  emotions,  of  a  sense  of  struggling  onward — 
Nisus  nach  vorwdrts,  he  calls  it.  He  was  much  in  the 
open  air,  wandering  about  the  country  or  tramping  be- 
tween Frankfort  and  Darmstadt.  He  enjoyed  breasting 
the  storm  in  sheer  exuberance  of  physical  energy.  The 
curious  poem  '  Wanderer's  Stormsong,*  with  its  wild 
talk  of  pushing  forward  under  the  protecting  care  of 
Genius,  its  tense  feeling,  its  grandiloquent  language 
hovering  on  the  brink  of  nonsense,  is  a  reflex  of  these 
lonely  buffetings  with  nature.  Strange  as  it  may  seem, 
there  is  autobiography  in  the  passage  of  '  Faust '  where 
the  conjuror  is  acted  on  by  the  magic  of  the  Earth- 
spirit.  He  feels  a  sudden  access  of  power  and  courage, 
would  fain  battle  with  the  storm,  and  experiences  some- 
thing very  like  a  volcanic  eruption  of  his  emotional 
nature. 

During  the  winter  Goethe  became  acquainted  with 
J[.  H.  Merck  of  Darmstadt,  a  man  whose  friendship 
proved  highly  valuable.  Merck  was  a  well-read  man  of 
thirty,  a  good  judge  of  books,  a  trenchant  writer.  He 
had  many  warm  friends,  and  there  were  those  who  feared 
him  for  his  caustic  wit.  Urbanity  and  gentleness  were 
certainly  not  strong  points  of  his,  yet  he  was  hardly 
so  cynical  and  Mephistophelean  as  one  might  infer  from 
the  sketch  of  him  in  *  Poetry  and  Truth.'  Merck's  clear- 
headedness and  good  common  sense  stood  his  friend 
in  good  stead  in  the  days  of  his  emotional  storm  and 
stress. 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS        45 

It  was  in  Darmstadt,  too,  that  Goethe  fell  in  with  a 
bevy  of  sentimental  damosels  who  lionized  him  tenderly, 
giving  expression  to  their  chaste  ardors  in  ways  that  often 
copied  those  of  the  earthly  Eros.  They  called  one  another 
by  poetic  names — Psyche,  Lila,  Urania — held  little  festi- 
vals of  gushing  sensibility,  met  with  a  loving  kiss,  and 
parted  with  a  sad  embrace.  Psyche  was  Caroline  Flachs- 
land,  prospective  bride  of  Herder.  *  Our  heavenly  friend,' 
she  wrote  to  her  lover  at  Biickeburg,  in  May,  1772,  *  is 
gone  again.  I  parted  from  him  with  a  kiss  and  a  tear  in 
my  heart.'  How  the  fascinating  Dr.  Goethe  played  Bun- 
thorne  to  these  ladies  can  best  be  read  in  his  poem  '  Ely- 
sium. To  Urania.'  Urania  was  a  certain  Fraulein  von 
Rousillon,  and  Elysium  was  the  state  attained  when, 
after  they  had  been  introduced  and  had  '  sauntered  hand 
in  hand  o'er  holy  vales,' 

To  him  that  loved  thee 
With  quiet  yearning 
Thou  gavest  thy  cheek 
For  a  heavenly  kiss. 

They  called  him  the  Wanderer,  sometimes  the  Confidant. 
One  must  remember  that  this  was  the  era  of  the  beau- 
tiful soul — all  sighs,  raptures,  and  tears,  especially  tears. 
A  noble  and  delicate  nature  was  supposed,  quite  apart 
from  any  definite  cause  of  grief,  to  reveal  itself  best  in 
a  weepy  behavior. 

One  of  the  best  poems  of  the  year  1772  is  entitled 
the  '  Wanderer.'  A  traveler  in  Italy  comes  upon  a  hut 
half  hidden  in  vines  and  bushes.  A  young  mother  with 
a  nursing  infant  greets  him  and  he  learns  that  the  hut 
as  built  on  the  ruins  of  an  ancient  temple.     He  indulges 


46  GOETHE 

in  lofty  reflections  about  art  and  nature  while  she  talks 
of  her  baby.  He  goes  away  with  a  quickened  sense  of 
the  blessedness  of  her  lot.  It  is  an  exquisite  picture  and 
the  lines  are  charming  in  their  chaste  dignity  of  ex- 
pression. 

By  his  connection  with  Merck  Goethe  was  soon  drawn 
into  a  lively  campaign  of  review-writing  for  the  Frank- 
fort Gelehrte  Anzeigefi.  For  just  one  year — 1772 — this 
journal  was  the  organ  of  a  group  of  literary  free-lances 
who  were  bent  on  stirring  up  and  ozonizing  the  stagnant 
air  of  conventional  opinion.  Their  general  spirit  was 
the  spirit  of  Herder's  radicalism.  By  the  end  of  a  year 
they  had  made  so  much  trouble  that  the  magazine  was 
taken  out  of  their  hands  and  ceased  to  be  irritating  or 
interesting.  Goethe's  contributions,  anonymous  like  all 
the  rest,  were  often  savagely  magisterial.  They  suggest 
a  young  Hercules  laying  about  with  his  club  among  the 
bigwigs  and  pretenders  and  caring  little  for  aching  heads. 

Some  of  the  most  interesting  reviews  concern  religion 
and  the  bible.  From  childhood  Goethe  had  loved  the  bible, 
that  is,  certain  parts  of  it,  and  on  account  of  this  love  he 
was  not  to  be  greatly  disturbed  by  learned  proofs  of  its 
inconsistency.  '  Let  the  evangelists  disagree  if  only  the 
evangel  be  consistent,'  he  said.  He  had  come  to  feel  that 
the  vital  essence  of  religion  was  a  matter  of  feeling — 
love  and  faith  welling  up  in  the  individual  soul — and 
hence  beyond  the  reach  of  the  critical  intellect.  He  was 
thus  free  to  regard  the  bible  from  his  newly-won  his- 
torical point  of  view  as  a  wonderful  collection  of  human 
documents  to  be  understood  with  reference  to  time  and 
place  and  human  nature.  It  irked  him  to  see  men  using 
it  only  as  a  quarry  for  creed  and  dogma  and  the  maxims 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS        47 

of  intolerance.  In  a  caustic  review  of  Bahrdt's  '  Eden ' 
he  wrote: 

If  the  author  had  known  how  to  approach  the  Mosaic  writ- 
ings reverently  as  one  of  the  oldest  monuments  of  human  his- 
tory, as  fragments  of  an  Egyptian  pyramid,  he  would  not  have 
drowned  the  images  of  Oriental  poetry  in  a  homiletic  flood;  he 
would  not  have  wrenched  off  and  cut  up  the  limbs  of  the  torso 
to  find  in  them  the  ideas  of  German  university  professors  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  It  is  disgusting  to  have  one  of  these 
writers  presume  to  tell  us  how,  in  the  story  of  Eden  or  in  the 
image  of  the  Serpent,  Eternal  Wisdom  teaches  this  and  does 
not  teach  that. 

This  view  of  Scripture  reflects  the  ideas  of  Harder 
and  of  Herder's  teacher  Hamann,  the  Magus  of  the 
North,  with  whom  Goethe  now'^i^ecame  acquainted  at 
long  range.  For  a  year  or  two  his  style,  especially  when 
he  is  writing  of  religion,  is  noticeably  colored  by  the 
oracular  mysticism  of  these  two  men.     In  the  '  Letter 

of  Pastor ,'  published  anonymously  in  1772,  he  set 

forth  his  religion  of  love  and  tolerance,  his  hatred  of 
theological  dogmatism. 

In  the  month  of  May  he  again  left  home,  this  time 
nominally  to  study  the  ways  of  the  imperial  chamber  of 
justice  at  Wetzlar.  They  were  very  bad  ways — a  hope- 
less maze  of  inefficiency,  corruption,  and  antiquated 
abuses,  a  living  symbol  of  the  empire's  rottenness.  Of 
course  Goethe  paid  little  attention  to  the  repellent  jungle. 
Instead  he  devoted  himself  to  the  friends,  the  moods, 
and  the  enjoyments,  which  were  afterwards  described 
.  ,with  peerless  art  in  *  Werther.'  In  the  charming  region 
about  Wetzlar,  then  in  the  witching  dress  of  early  sum- 
mer, he  soon  found  cozy  nooks  to  which  he  would  repair, 
with  a  volume  of  Homer  or  of  Pindar  in  his  hand,  to 


48  GOETHE 

commune  with  their  thoughts  or  his  own.  Or  perhaps 
it  was  to  chat  with  a  village  maid  at  the  well,  to  play 
with  little  children,  to  try  his  hand  at  sketching,  or  to 
lie  on  his  back  in  the  tall  grass  and  revel  in  the  sense 
of  brotherhood  with  the  bugs  and  worms.  For  Germany 
at  least  a  new  poetry  of  nature  begins  with  that  summer 
of  1772,  when  the  young  Goethe  '  mingled  with  the  uni- 
verse ' — to  use  Byron's  expression — at  Wetzlar. 

And  then  another  love-idyl  and  another  humble  daugh- 
ter of  Eve  listed  for  immortality  just  for  being  herself 
what  time  a  certain  Wanderer  was  passing  her  way. 
This  time  it  was  Lotte  Buff,  an  embodiment  of  the  solid 
domestic  virtues.  The  death  of  her  mother  had  left 
her  in  charge  of  a  flock  of  younger  brothers  and  sisters. 
There  was  much  work  to  do  and  she  did  it  with  a  cheer- 
ful competence.  She  was  betrothed  to  a  lawyer  named 
Kestner,  a  sensible  man  of  ordinary  parts.  How  Goethe 
met  Lotte  as  she  was  cutting  bread  and  butter,  liked  her, 
took  her  to  a  dance,  liked  her  more  and  more,  visited 
her  often,  romped  with  the  little  folk,  meanwhile  win- 
ning and  holding  the  friendly  regard  of  her  lover — all 
this  has  often  been  recounted  since  Goethe  first  told  the 
story  by  way  of  explaining  the  origin  of  '  Werther.'  By 
the  beginning  of  September  he  felt  that  honor  and  his 
own  peace  of  mind  required  him  to  go  away.  And  he 
went — without  saying  farewell.  For  many  a  month  after 
his  departure  he  wrote  often  to  Kestner,  sending  his  love 
to  the  '  angel '  in  Wetzlar,  raving  over  her  silhouette  in 
his  room,  and  telling  of  his  frequent  dreams  of  her. 

On  leaving  Wetzlar  he  did  not  go  directly  to  Frankfort 
but  paid  a  visit  with  Merck  to  Frau  von  La  Roche  in 
Koblenz.     Here  there  was  another  congress  of  senti- 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS        49 

mental  souls.  Fraujvon^La  Roche..,had  lately  published 
her  tearful  novel  '  Fraulein  von  Sternheim,'  which  had 
made  her  a  notable  person  in  the  literary  world.  She  was 
the  friend  of  Wieland,  who  had  once  been  her  lover,  and 
she  had  many  connections  in  the  higher  social  world. 
An  aristocratic  lady  of  much  tact,  she  liked  to  assemble 
the  notabilities  of  the  day  about  her  and  to  exhibit  her 
skill  in  keeping  the  peace  among  sentimentalists,  ration- 
alists, cynics,  and  men  of  the  world.  Goethe  was  de- 
lighted with  this  new  '  Mama/  as  he  took  to  calling  her, 
and  still  more  delighted  with  her  charming  daughter 
Maximiliane.  Here  too  he  met  the  brothers  Jacobi  and 
the  renowned  lady-killer  Leuchsenring,  who  made  a  spe- 
cialty of  sentimental  gossip. 

After  his  return  to  Frankfort  the  rest  of  the  year  was 
devoted  to  the  writing  of  reviews  and  other  minor  things 
and  to  sketching  from  nature.  This  last  gradually  be- 
came a  passion,  so  that  he  was  in  doubt  whether  his  call 
was  not  to  painting  instead  of  poetry  or  literature.  It 
seemed  to  him  in  these  days  that  feeling  was  the  whole 
of  life,  and  natural  expression  of  feeling  the  whole  of 
art.  He  hated  affectation.  He  hated  all  rules  and  con- 
ventions, all  intrusion  of  the  intellect  into  the  sacred 
temple  of  the  heart.  The  subject  of  art  was  much  in 
his  thoughts.  It  w^as  at  this  time  that  he  wrote  out  the 
insurgent  ideas  that  had  been  inspired  by  the  Strassburg 
cathedral  and  published  them,  in  the  cryptic  style  of  a 
prophet  crying  in  the  wilderness,  under  the  title  of  '  Ger- 
man Architecture.'  In  the  midst  of  these  employments  he 
heard  of  the  suicide  of  a  young  man  named  Jerusalem, 
whom  he  had  known  slightly  at  Wetzlar.  The  occurrence 
made  a  deep  impression  on  his  mind,  the  more  since  rumor 


50  GOETHE 

ascribed  it  to  hopeless  love.  He  sent  to  Kestner  for  a 
full  account  of  the  circumstances,  and  ere  long  the  tragic 
story  of  Werther  was  taking  shape  in  his  imagination. 

Early  in  the  year  1773  he  set  about  revising  '  Gottfried 
von  Berlichingen.'  The  revision  he  made  was  by  no 
means  radical — not  at  all  a  concession  to  the  regular 
drama  or  to  the  perverse  opinion  that  he  had  been  spoiled 
by  Shakspere.  He  knew  very  well  how  to  construct  a 
regular  drama,  if  he  had  wished,  but  he  did  not  wish. 
He  proposed  to  take  nature  for  a  guide;  to  follow  his 
instinct,  his  genius,  and  let  the  rules  go  hang.  This, 
he  believed,  was  just  what  Shakspere  had  done,  and  to 
do  likewise  was  in  a  sense  to  imitate  Shakspere.  So 
he  merely  pruned  away  some  excrescences  of  the  old 
*  Gottfried,'  toned  down  the  language  a  little  where  it 
was  extravagant  or  gross,  gave  a  little  more  care  to  the 
motivation  of  certain  scenes,  and  made  the  sub-tragedy 
of  Weislingen  and  Adelheid  a  little  less  prominent.  When 
it  was  done  it  was  still  a  life-history  presented  in  a  suc- 
cession of  dramatic  pictures.  Even  now  he  was  reluctant 
to  publish  his  work  and  expected  to  do  some  more  revis- 
ing; but  Merck  made  light  of  his  scruples  and  offered 
to  print  it  if  the  author  would  provide  the  paper.  The 
thing  was  done  in  that  way  and  the  new  '  Gotz '  came 
out  anonymously  in  June.  It  proved  to  be  the  begin- 
ning of  the  greatest  of  German  literary  reputations. 

As  always  when  genius  sets  its  sovran  foot  on  con- 
ventional rule,  there  were  mutterings  of  disapproval. 
Lessing,  who  had  lately  been  showing  by  precept  and 
example  how  a  stage-play  should  be  constructed,  was 
coolly  critical.  The  King  of  Prussia  characterized 
'  Gotz '  as  a  *  detestable  imitation  of  those  bad  English 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS        51 

pieces.'  But  the  general  voice  was  like  a  cry  of  bravo! 
Burger  could  hardly  contain  his  enthusiasm.  Herder  and 
Wieland  found  good  things  to  say.  Perhaps  the  general 
opinion  was  best  expressed  by  a  reviewer  in  the  Frank- 
fort Gelehrte  Anzeigen:  *  Form  is  form;  but  if  the  author 
had  written  in  a  Chinese  form  we  should  still  have  to 
prize  his  genius.'  Today  the  old  rancors  over  the  viola- 
tion of  the  dramatic  unities  have  lost  interest.  We  have 
learned  that  the  rules  were  made  for  man.  And  after 
all  '  Gotz '  is  an  effective  stage-play  when  well  presented. 
But  its  interest,  on  the  boards  as  in  the  reading,  depends 
on  its  variety  of  incident  and  character,  its  picturesque 
scenes,  its  human  heartiness. 

The  other  work  of  the  year  1773  is  now  of  minor 
interest,  save  as  it  was  a  preparation  for  better  things 
to  come.  This  was  a  time  of  changing  moods  and  desul- 
tory beginnings.  The  Darmstadt  circle  broke  up.  Urania 
died,  Psyche  married  Herder,  the  Mercks  went  to  Rus- 
sia. Kestner  married  Lotte  and  took  her  to  Hannover, 
and  Cornelia  went  away  as  the  wife  of  Schlosser.  Thus 
Goethe  was  left  with  a  feeling  of  loneliness,  to  '  wander 
in  a  desert  where  there  was  no  water '  and  to  brood  over 
the  instability  of  the  loves  and  friendships  which  alone 
made  Hfe  worth  living.  His  law  business  bored  him. 
With  fitful  energy  he  threw  himself  into  various  literary 
projects  the  most  of  which  were  never  completed,  tho 
some  were  published  long  afterwards  in  fragmentary 
form.  His  interest  in  the  sixteenth  century  led  him  to 
read  Hans  Sachs,  the  cobbler-poet  of  Niirnberg,  in  whom 
he  found  a  kindred  nature.  The  old  Kniltt elvers — a 
free-and-easy  rimed  tetrameter — appealed  to  him  because 
of  its  bluff  German  raciness,  and  he  commenced  using 


52  GOETHE 

it  for  light  satiric  skits.  In  this  meter  too  he  com- 
menced '  storming  out '  his  *  Faust.'  He  wrote  a  musical 
comedy,  worked  now  and  then  at  '  Werther,'  and 
pondered  much  over  the  relation  of  the  creative  artist  to 

NJne  riddle  of  life. 

/  At  times  his  tendency  to  hypochondria  afflicted  him 
gravely  and  he  had  thoughts  of  suicide.  And  yet  he  knew 
very  well  that  he  and  some  of  his  contemporaries  were 
suffering  from  a  species  of  disease.  He  had  inwardly 
broken  with  the  sentimentalists  so  far  as  to  be  able  to 
view  the  cult  objectively  as  an  artist.  Sometimes  it 
appeared  to  him  a  sickish  absurdity  fit  for  satire,  again 
as  a  soul-sickness  that  might  have  tragic  consequences. 
He  resolved  to  body  it  forth  in  its  perilous  aspect,  and  to 
do  this  with  uncompromising  realism  on  the  basis  of  his 
own  experience  at  Wetzlar.  This  experience  would  suf- 
fice for  the  happier  part  of  the  story,  while  the  suicide 
of  Jerusalem  gave  the  hint  for  a  tragic  ending.  But  his 
own  idyl  had  not  ended  disastrously;  Kestner  had  not 
been  jealous.  A  new  motive  was  needed.  Toward  the 
end  of  the  year  the  charming  Maxe  von  La  Roche  came 
to  Frankfort  as  the  bride  of  an  elderly  widower  named 
Brentano.  The  marriage  had  been  arranged  for  her  by 
her  scheming  mother  and  she  was  not  happy.  Goethe 
undertook  to  make  things  pleasant  for  her  in  his  way 
and  the  result  was  a  painful  scene  with  the  husband. 
Insensibly  the  Albert  and  Lotte  of  his  imagination  began 
to  take  on  the  features  of  Brentano  and  Maxe. 

In  February,  1774,  he  shut  himself  up  in  his  room  to 
fix  on  paper  his  melancholy  vision  of  hopeless  love  and 
suicide.  In  four  weeks  of  such  complete  seclusion  and 
intense  concentration  that  he  afterwards  likened  it  to  a 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS        53 

sleep-walking  trance,  it  was  finished.  The  following 
autumn  it  appeared  in  print  as  the  *  Sufferings  of  Young 
Werther'  and  soon  achieved  one  of  the  most  memorable^: 
triumphs  in  the  whole  history  of  literature.  From  this 
time  forth  Goethe  was  the  cynosure  of  German  eyes,  the 
accepted  prophet  of  a  new  era. 

It  would  not  be  worth  while  to  tell  again,  even  briefly, 
the  oft-told  story  of  the  Werther  craze.  But  however 
absurd  it  may  seem  today  and  seemed  at  the  time  to  the 
sober-minded,  it  was  at  bottom  an  honest  tribute  of  admi- 
ration for  a  wonderful  book.  Such  emotional  excitement 
over  the  printed  page  had  never  before  been  known  in 
Germany.  No  book  of  any  kind  had  ever  before  so 
touched  the  general  heart,  had  ever  loosed  such  a  flood 
of  sympathetic  tears.  It  did  not  seem  to  be  mere  litera- 
ture, but  life  itself;  and  alas  for  the  badness  of  a  w^orld 
that  had  done  to  death  so  excellent  a  youth  as  Werther! 

Dull  wits — so  they  seem  now — took  it  for  a  defense 
of  suicide,  but  it  should  be  remembered  that,  speaking 
broadly,  the  best  minds  in  Germany  had  not  yet  got  be- 
yond the  point  of  regarding  imaginative  literature  as  the 
handmaid  of  religion  and  morality.  How  could  a  writer 
depict  unethical  conduct  without  sanctioning  it  as  a  man 
and  a  brother  ?  Goethe's  advice,  '  Be  a  man  and  do  not 
follow  his  example,'  must  have  seemed  to  his  critics 
as  if  a  man  should  poison  the  air  and  then  advise  people 
not  to  breathe  it.  For  it  would  have  been  so  easy  for 
poor  Werther  to  keep  his  bark  afloat.  A  little  com- 
mon sense  and  self-control,  even  a  little  more  persistent 
devotion  to  the  sketching  over  which  he  had  merely 
dawdled,  would  have  saved  him.  Not  many  had  as  yet 
reflected  that  the  sad  consequences  of  passionate  error, 


54  GOETHE 

whether  in  life  or  in  literature,  might  always  be  avoided 
if  only  men  were  not  what  they  are  and  life  not  what 
it  is.  Today  the  interesting  thing  about  '  Werther '  is 
not  its  ethical  tendency,  for  it  has  none,  but  its  epoch- 
making  art.  On  that  subject  there  will  be  something  to 
say  in  the  Second  Part  of  this  volume. 

It  was  Goethe's  way  to  rid  himself  of  mental  trouble 
by  raising  it  to  the  nth  power  in  a  work  of  the  imagi- 
nation. After  the  writing  of  '  Werther  '  he  was  immune 
to  Wertherism;  he  had  expelled  the  poison  from  his  sys- 
tem. Yet  he  had  not  by  any  means  acquired  the  virtue 
of  calmness  in  the  presence  of  the  sphinx,  if  indeed  that 
be  a  virtue.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  now  as  much  as 
ever  under  the  dominance  of  his  emotional  nature,  his 
moods,  passions,  and  whims.  The  work  of  1774  and 
1775  reflects  a  period  of  intense  but  desultory  creative 
energy.  It  includes  rollicking  and  satirical  farce,  musi- 
cal comedy,  exquisite  songs  and  ballads,  sentimental 
drama  of  fickle  love,  and  poetic  tragedy  of  titanic  revolt. 
All  of  these  things  welled  up  from  the  sub-conscious  realm 
of  feeling  and  vision  with  but  little  control  by  the  critical 
intellect.  For  the  psychic  state  out  of  which  his  youthful 
creations  were  born,  and  for  the  psychic  process  that  gave 
them  birth,  the  maturer  Goethe  had  two  untranslatable 
names:  for  the  former  Dumpfheit,  and  for  the  latter 
hinwuhlen. 

Among  the  lighter  writings  of  this  period  is  the  little 
prose  farce  entitled  '  Gods,  Heroes,  and  Wieland,'  which 
was  dashed  off  quickly  in  a  mood  of  satiric  humor  over 
Wieland's  claim  to  have  improved  on  Euripides  as  a  de- 
lineator of  Greek  character.  Wieland  had  now  settled  in 
Weimar  and  started  his  Teutscher  Merkur,  which  was 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS        55 

destined  to  have  a  long  and  creditable  career.  He  was 
disliked  by  the  sentimentalists  because  his  newest  manner 
seemed  to  deal  too  lightly  with  the  sacred  things  of 
the  heart.  As  a  respecter  of  things  French  he  was  an  ob- 
ject of  loathing  to  the  virtuous  Teutons  of  Gottingen,  with 
whom  Goethe  had  lately  come  into  connection  as  an  occa- 
sional contributor  to  their  Musenalmanach.  Up  with 
Klopstock,  down  with  Wieland,  was  the  prime  article  of 
their  creed.  For  a  little  while  Goethe  shared  this  curious 
pique  against  the  genial  Wieland.  His  none  too  amusing 
skit  was  taken  in  good  part  by  its  victim,  who  even 
praised  it  in  the  Merkur  as  a  good  thing  of  its  kind. 
It  proved  no  bar  to  a  life-long  friendship. 

Other  humorous  bagatelles  took  the  form  of  the  old 
Shrovetide  play  in  doggerel  verse.  Such  was  the  '  Annual 
Fair  at  Plundersweilern/  a  collection  of  diverting  char- 
acter-sketches illustrating  the  Vanity  Fair  of  Frankfort 
life.  It  afterwards  proved  acceptable  on  the  amateur 
stage  at  Weimar  and  is  still  playable.  In  *  Pater  Brey ' 
Goethe  paid  his  respects  to  the  sentimental  fraud  Leuch- 
senring,  and  in  '  Satyros  '  to  the  satyr  masking  as  a  sen- 
timentalist. The  personal  allusions  are  too  deeply  dis- 
guised to  be  made  out  with  certainty.  In  these  pieces 
and  in  others  of  their  kind  the  author's  point  of  view 
is  that  of  an  amused  observer  of  the  human  comedy. 
His  stage-craft  is  of  the  simplest  and  the  thin  plot  is 
only  an  excuse  for  the  character-sketches.  In  the  con- 
temporary music-dramas  '  Erwin  and  Elmire  '  and  '  Clau- 
dine  von  Villa  Bella  '  the  dramatic  element  is  also  of  small 
account,  being  little  more  than  a  conventional  setting  for 
the  interspersed  songs. 

With  his  strong  bent  for  the  dramatic  form  of  expres- 


56  GOETHE 

sion,  with  the  teaching  of  Lessing  before  his  eyes,  and 
with  the  criticism  of  '  Gotz  von  BerHchingen '  ringing 
in  his  ears,  it  was  but  natural  that  Goethe  should  wish 
to  show  that  he  too  could  do  a  stage  play  in  accordance 
with  the  rules  of  the  game;  that  is,  a  play  with  the  action 
,  concentrated  and  the  unities  observed.  He  had  become 
I  interested  in  the  memoirs  of  Beaumarchais,  wherein 
that  versatile  Frenchman  told  of  his  sister's  wrongs  at 
the  hands  of  a  certain  Spaniard  named  Clavijo.  The  story 
was  that  Clavijo  as  a  poor  clerk  had  engaged  himself 
to  Marie  Beaumarchais  and  then,  when  he  began  to  rise 
in  the  world,  had  thought  to  cast  her  off  as  an  encum- 
brance; whereupon  Beaumarchais  had  hurried  to  Madrid 
as  his  sister's  champion  and  compelled  Clavijo  to  keep 
his  promise.  Here  was  just  the  thing  for  a  play :  a  fickle 
lover  who  deserts  his  sweetheart  for  prudential  reasons, 
a  wronged  girl,  an  avenging  brother.  It  was  only  neces- 
sary to  invent  a  cold-hearted  worldling  as  Clavijo's  con- 
fidant and  adviser,  to  let  the  sickly  Marie  die  of  her 
wrongs,  and  to  kill  off  Clavijo  for  his  sins,  and  the  plot 
of  a  sentimental  tragedy  of  desertion  was  all  complete. 
Goethe  wrote  his  '  Clavigo  '  very  rapidly — in  a  week,  says 
Toetry  and  Truth  ' — making  free  use  of  Beaumarchais' 
exact  language.  It  was  published  in  1774  and  served  its 
purpose.  Technically  it  has  always  been  regarded  as  a 
good  piece  of  work. 

A  similar  verdict  can  hardly  be  rendered  in  the  case  of 
'  Stella,'  pubHshed  in  1775  as  another  variation  of  the 
ever-insistent  theme  of  the  inconstant  lover.  An  emo- 
tional weakling  marrying  two  women  in  succession  and 
deserting  both  for  no  better  reason  than  a  love  of  free- 
dom and  variety — this  was  a  scheme  which  could  not 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS        57 

possibly  be  made  acceptable.  The  original  solution,  by 
which  the  forsaken  wives  agreed  to  share  the  delectable 
Fernando  between  them,  was  too  bizarre  even  for  an 
age  that  delighted  above  all  things  in  asserting  the  claims 
of  the  afflicted  heart  against  the  usages  of  society.  It 
was  very  like  making  comedy  of  sacred  things.  In  later 
editions  of  the  play  Fernando  is  made  to  take  himself 
off  with  a  pistol-shot.  This  is  certainly  better  from  the 
stage  point  of  view,  but  it  does  not  really  mend  matters. 
'  Stella  '  suffers  incurably  from  its  hero's  lack  of  every- 
day manliness.  One  feels  that  the  sympathetic  tear  is 
wasted  in  such  a  case  as  his. 

Feeling  at  war  with  the  world — this  was  for  Goethe  in 
these  years  of  storm  and  stress  the  fundamental  aspect 
of  life's  tragedy.  If  a  hero  of  his  was  weak  and  unoc- 
cupied, with  nothing  to  do  but  brood  over  his  own  emo- 
tions and  sigh  for  another  man's  wife,  he  might  end  like 
Werther  by  '  puking  up  his  miserable  existence.'  But  if 
he  was  strong  and  self-reliant,  with  a  will  to  fight  and 
endure,  then  there  were  different  possibilities.  In  case  his 
sea  of  troubles  consisted  of  the  unnecessary  arrangements 
of  man,  we  get  a  Gotz  von  Berlichingen  going  down  in 
a  futile  struggle  against  the  crooked  politics  of  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire.  If,  however,  the  sea  of  troubles  was 
simply  the  nature  of  things  on  earth,  then  we  have  a 
drama  of  titanic  revolt  against  the  ever-living  gods — a 
'  Prometheus,'  a  *  Faust.'  Among  all  the  unfinished 
projects  of  Goethe's  youth  the  torso  condition  is  most  to 
be  regretted  in  the  case  of  '  Prometheus.'  No  modern 
poet — not  even  Shelley — has  achieved  anything  finer  in  a 
mood  of  revolt  than  that  splendid  soliloquy  of  the  Titan- 
artist  as  he  '  fashions  men '  in  proud  reliance  on  his  own 


58  GOETHE 

genius,  and  hurls  defiance  at  the  wretched  Olympians 
who  would  starve  but  for  the  sacrifices  doled  out  to 
them  by  fools  dreaming  of  things  that  are  not. 

But,  splendid  as  the  Prometheus  fragment  is,  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  insurgent  thoughts  which  might  have  gone 
into  it  were  all  sooner  or  later  poured  into  '  Faust/  For 
Faust  too  is  an  insurgent  in  the  grand  style,  who  tugs 
at  the  chains  of  human  existence  in  the  vain  hope  of 
breaking  them.  The  old  magician  who  had  sold  his  soul 
to  the  devil  had  gradually  taken  shape  in  Goethe's  imagi- 
nation as  a  misunderstood  searcher  for  satisfying  truth; 
as  a  dreamer  of  transcendental  dreams  who,  disap- 
pointed in  his  first  attempt  to  conquer  the  spirit-world 
by  natural  magic,  had  leagued  himself  with  a  sensual 
demon — not  from  unholy  curiosity,  but  from  a  passion- 
ate desire  of  universal  experience.  Just  how  the  singular 
play  would  have  ended  if  it  had  been  finished  in  1775 
ng^one  can  say  positively.^  Much  was  written  at  that 
"time,  but  the  most  of  the  early  scenes  relate  to  Faust's 
love  and  betrayal  of  Margaret — the  most  moving  of 
German  love-tragedies,  but  only  a  passing  episode  in  the 
great  drama  of  '  Faust.' 

Along  with  '  Faust '  Goethe  worked  on  a  tragedy 
'  Egmont,'  conceiving  the  character  quite  unhistorically 
as  a  '  demonic '  nature  borne  on  to  his  doom  by  sheer 
buoyancy  of  spirit.  For  a  while,  also,  he  took  a  lively 
interest  in  Lavater's  project  of  creating  a  science  of 
the  human  features;  he  contributed  a  mass  of  material, 
both  text  and  drawings,  to  the  famous  '  Physiological 
Fragments.'  It  is  possible  too,  but  not  certain,  that  even 
at  this  early  date  he  began  to  think  of  a  novel  that  should 
1  Farther  on,  in  Chapter  XVI,  a  guess  is  hazarded. 


YOUTHFUL  TRIALS  AND  TRIUMPHS         59 

serve  as  a  sort  of  antidote  to  *  Werther  ';  a  story  in  which 
the  hero,  very  much  hke  Werther  in  many  respects, 
should  be  saved  from  despair  by  his  devotion  to  an  art. 

Finally,  there  are  a  few  songs  dating  from  this  period. 
Their  number  is  not  great,  and  their  lyric  quality  will 
be  considered  further  on  in  the  chapter  entitled  '  The 
Poet.'  Among  the  best  are  the  '  King  of  Thule,'  incor- 
porated in  '  Faust,'  and  '  New  Life,  New  Love.'  This 
'  new  love,'  poetically  called  Lili,  was  a  Fraulein  Schone-- 
mann,  to  whom,  for  a  few  months  of  the  year  1775, 
Goethe  was  engaged  to  be  married.  The  engagement 
was  a  cause  of  infinite  worriment,  in  which  passionate 
infatuation,  craven  doubts,  grim  resolve,  fears,  and 
anxieties,  all  played  a  part.  At  one  time  he  thought  of 
quitting  the  bad  Old  World  altogether  and  settling  with 
Lili  in  the  wilds  of  Pennsylvania.  Finally  the  engage- 
ment was  broken  off — probably  at  the  instance  of  the 
young  woman's  family.  She  was  the  daughter  of  a 
banker  and  fond  of  the  social  whirl.  He  was  without 
prospect  of  an  independent  income  and  did  not  care  for 
the  social  whirl.  What  he  liked  best  was  to  commune 
abstractedly  with  the  spirits  of  his  poetic  dream-world. 
His  ways  must  have  been  inurbane  at  times,  for  they 
called  him  the  '  bear.' 

Toward  the  end  of  the  year  1775  the  Wanderer  came 
to  what  proved  to  be  the  most  momentous  turning-point 
of  his  whole  life.  During  the  summer  he  had  visited 
Switzerland,  tramped  about  the  Bernese  Oberland,  and 
received  the  impressions  which  were  afterwards  pub- 
Hshed  under  the  title  of  '  Letters  from  Switzerland.'  He 
had  thought  of  continuing  his  journey  into  Ital}^  but 
the  magnet  in  Frankfort  was  too  strong  and  pulled  him 


6o  GOETHE 

back.  After  viewing  the  Promised  Land  from  the  sum- 
mit of  the  Gotthard  he  set  his  face  toward  home.  Not 
long  after  his  return  he  met  the  young  duke  of  Weimar, 
Karl  August,  who  had  just  taken  the  reins  of  govern- 
ment into  his  own  hands.  They  had  met  twice  before: 
once  in  December,  1774,  when  the  boy  prince  was  on 
the  way  to  Paris  with  his  tutor,  and  again  in  May,  1775, 
while  he  was  visiting  Karlsruhe.  Being  now  his  own 
master  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  Karl  August  was  minded 
to  make  friends  with  the  handsome  Dr.  Goethe,  whom 
everybody  was  talking  about  and  who  seemed  to  be  a 
man  after  his  own  heart.  There  was  now  a  cordial  invi- 
tation to  visit  the  Weimar  court.  Nothing  was  said  as 
yet  of  any  official  position — it  was  to  be  only  a  visit. 
And  yet  both  prince  and  poet  may  each  have  had  his 
own  thoughts  as  to  what  might  happen  in  case  they 
should  suit  each  other. 


CHAPTER  IV 
NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR 

It  has  sometimes  been  accounted  a  sort  of  treason  to 
the  poet's  calHng  that  Goethe  should  have  allowed  him- 
self, during  ten  precious  years  of  his  early  manhood,  to 
be  absorbed  in  the  business  and  amusements  of  a  petty 
provincial  court.  One  thinks  of  Apollo  tending  the  sheep 
of  Admetus.  Certain  it  is  that  the  work  of  these  toil- 
some years  could  have  been  done  as  well,  for  the  most 
part,  by  a  man  of  commoner  stuff,  while  the  work  that 
was  temporarily  neglected  was  possible  to  no  one  else. 
Nevertheless  there  is  another  side  to  the  matter.  In  the 
Germany  of  that  day  the  career  of  letters  was  virtually 
impossible  unless  supported  by  a  salary.  At  the  very 
best  the  rewards  of  authorship  were  meager  and  uncer- 
tain. As  a  Frankfort  lawyer  Goethe  was  tied  to  a  pro- 
fession that  he  disliked;  as  a  writer  of  books  he  was 
without  prospect  of  a  living  income.  Moreover,  it  was 
precisely  the  poet  in  him  that  demanded  a  new  environ- 
ment. He  had,  so  to  speak,  used  up  the  city  of  his  birth, 
and  his  riotous  imagination  needed  a  fresh  contact  with 
life  in  a  different  sphere.  We  may  even  say  that  it 
needed,  for  a  w^hile  at  least,  the  counterpoise  of  routine 
employment. 

The  Weimar  of  that  day — Goethe  arrived  there  early 
in  November,  1775, — could  have  made  no  claim  to  dis- 

61 


62  GOETHE 

tinction  among  German  cities.  Everything  was  on 
a  small  scale.  The  total  area  of  the  duchy  was  a  little 
more  than  half  that  of  Rhode  Island  or  of  the  English 
county  of  Cornwall.  The  diminutive  state  was  poor  in 
resources  and  had  hardly  recovered  from  the  industrial 
and  financial  troubles  incident  to  the  Seven  Years'  War. 
The  city  itself  had  a  population  of  about  six  thousand 
and  was  as  yet  almost  a  stranger  to  the  amenities  of 
art  and  wealth.  The  most  pretentious  building  of  the 
place,  the  ducal  palace,  had  lately  burned  to  the  ground. 
Such  being  the  conditions,  it  was  a  bold  dream  of  the 
young  duke  to  convert  his  modest  little  capital  into  the 
German  Athens. 

This  fine  ambition,  however,  was  itself  the  slowly- 
ripening  fruit  of  Goethe's  influence;  at  present  Karl 
August  was  mainly  bent  on  enjoying  himself  in  his  own 
way  with  friends  whom  he  liked  for  their  personal  quali- 
ties. During  his  minority  his  mother,  the  widowed 
duchess  Amalia,  had  ruled  as  regent,  winning  the  gen- 
eral regard  by  her  tact  and  genial  disposition.  Unlike 
her  uncle,  the  King  of  Prussia,  she  took  a  lively  inter- 
est in  German  letters  and  was  especially  fond  of  the 
drama.  It  was  she  who  secured  Wieland  for  Weimar 
by  calling  him  there  as  a  tutor  to  the  crown  prince.  The 
education  of  her  younger  son,  Constantin,  she  entrusted 
to  Karl  Ludwig  Knebel,  also  a  man  of  poetic  bent.  She 
was  still  young,  only  thirty-six,  when  Karl  August's 
accession  to  power  left  her  comparatively  free  for  the 
intellectual  and  esthetic  interests  in  which  she  found  her 
greatest  delight.  The  new  reigning  duchess,  a  Darm- 
stadt princess,  to  whom  Karl  August  had  lately  been 
married,  was  a  gentle,  conventionally-minded  woman — 


NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR  63 

Goethe's  letters  often  refer  to  her  as  the  '  angel  Louise  ' 
— whose  temperament  did  not  harmonize  very  well  with 
that  of  her  husband. 

As  for  Karl  August,  his  views  of  life  were  as  yet 
those  of  unspoiled  boyhood.  Full  of  vim  and  energy, 
fond  of  the  long  tramp  and  the  hard  ride,  indifferent  to 
comfort  and  luxury,  he  detested  all  tameness  and  espe- 
cially the  stiff  formalities  of  court  society.  He  liked  to 
hunt,  to  play  the  soldier,  to  battle  with  the  elements 
and  camp  in  the  woods  at  night,  to  flirt  with  the  village 
maids.  Withal,  as  time  abundantly  proved,  he  was  a 
youth  of  sterling  character,  amenable  to  counsel  in 
weighty  public  affairs,  and  eager  to  make  his  mark  as  a 
good  ruler.  To  win  the  affection  and  confidence  of  such 
a  Prince  Hal  and  plant  in  his  mind  the  seeds  of  poHtical 
idealism  seemed  to  Goethe  a  good  thing  to  do.  What 
wonder  if,  for  the  nonce,  it  seemed  a  better  thing  than  to 
go  on  writing  stories  and  plays  and  getting  oneself 
misunderstood  by  the  blear-eyed  critics? 

Those  immediately  about  the  duke  were  mainly  young 
men  who  held  some  sort  of  official  position,  but  were 
not  overworked  and  devoted  their  surplus  energy  to  lark- 
ing, poetizing,  and  play-acting.  Some  of  them,  notably 
Seckendorff,  Einsiedel,  and  Bertuch,  came  to  be  known 
as  minor  lights  of  literature.  With  them,  as  also  with 
Knebel  and  Chief  Forester  Wedel  and  Chamberlain  Kalb, 
Goethe  soon  became  more  or  less  intimate.  For  a  few 
weeks  after  his  arrival  he  took  a  leading  part  in  the 
frolics,  as  if  they  were  the  chief  end  of  man.  He  was 
much  in  the  home  of  Wieland,  the  whole  family  taking 
him  permanently  to  its  heart.  The  more  he  saw  of  the 
duke,  who  also  wrote  verse   on  occasion,  the  more  he 


64  GOETHE 

respected  and  liked  him.  When  asked  if  he  knew  a  good 
candidate  for  the  position  of  general  superintendent  of 
church  affairs,  he  suggested  his  old  friend  Herder  and 
at  once  set  about  working  in  a  quiet  way  to  bring  about 
the  appointment.  As  Herder  had  a  reputation  for  heter- 
odoxy this  involved  some  wire-pulling  in  opposition  to 
the  local  clergy.  The  visitor  began  to  feel  at  home  in 
his  new  role,  albeit  he  lacked  money  to  support  it  and 
was  obliged,  in  his  distress,  to  borrow  of  friend  Merck 
and  others.  Tongues  began  to  wag  over  the  wild  con- 
duct of  the  duke,  ascribing  it  to  the  debauching  influ- 
ence of  his  new  comrade.  But  each  felt  that  he  had  found 
a  friend  after  his  own  heart,  and  by  mid-winter  there 
was  an  understanding  between  them.  A  letter  of  Feb- 
ruary 14,  1776,  written  by  Goethe  to  his  confidential 
friend  Johanna  Fahlmer,  runs  in  part  as  follows : 

I  shall  probably  stay  and  play  my  role  as  well  as  I  can,  so 
long  as  it  pleases  myself  and  fate.  Were  it  only  for  a  few- 
years,  it  is  better  than  an  idle  life  at  home,  where  with  all  my 
eagerness  I  can  do  nothing.  Here  at  any  rate  I  have  a  brace 
of  duchies  before  me.  My  present  concern  is  to  become  ac- 
quainted with  the  country,  and  even  that  is  giving  me  much 
satisfaction.  The  duke  too  is  acquiring  thereby  a  love  of  work; 
and  as  I  know  him  I  am  not  troubled  by  certain  matters. 

In  short,  Karl  August  had  decided  to  keep  his  friend 
in  Weimar  by  offering  him  a  seat  in  the  council  of  state, 
a  project  in  which  he  was  opposed  by  his  chief  minister, 
Fritsch,  and  other  influential  personages.  And  indeed, 
according  to  all  the  standards  of  the  time,  it  was  a  strange 
thing  to  do;  for  Goethe  had  no  von  in  his  name,  he 
was  without  experience  in  public  affairs,  and  his  repu- 
tation was  that  of  a  young  genius  of  unsteady  ways  and 


NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR  65 

a  turn  for  frivolity.  The  venerated  author  of  the  '  Mes- 
siah '  was  shocked  by  the  rumors  and  sent  his  friend  a 
cautionary  message,  which  drew  out  a  sharp  reply  advis- 
ing '  dear  Klopstock  '  to  write  no  more  such  letters,  since 
they  would  do  no  good.  In  his  seemingly  quixotic  pur- 
pose the  duke  had  the  powerful  support  of  his  mother. 
It  is  probable  that  neither  she  nor  her  son  had  in  mind 
any  very  definite  sphere  of  statecraft  for  the  new  official, 
and  certainly  they  did  not  foresee  that  in  a  few  years 
he  would  become  the  chief  minister  of  the  duchy.  But 
they  liked  him  personally,  admired  his  gifts,  and  felt 
that  in  all  the  artistic  interests  of  the  court  he  would 
be  a  valuable  coadjutor. 

And  so  it  came  about  that  in  June,  1776,  Goethe  took 
his  seat  in  the  council  with  the  title  of  Privy  Councilor 
of  Legation  and  a  salary  of  twelve  hundred  talers.  From 
this  time  forth  he  took  his  new  responsibilities  very  seri- 
ously, but  there  was  at  first  not  much  for  him  to  do.  It 
was  several  years  before  the  burden  of  office  became 
really  oppressive.  Having  thus  time  to  orient  himself, 
he  traveled  much  about  the  duchy,  familiarizing  himself 
with  its  physical  features,  its  industries,  and  its  needs. 
Much  of  his  time  went  to  landscape-drawing.  His  let- 
ters refer  but  rarely  to  matters  of  public  concern,  so  that 
one  has  difficulty  in  imaging  the  serious  background  of 
his  life.  They  are  occupied  with  private  business  and 
personal  news,  with  his  goings  and  comings,  and  espe- 
cially with  the  state  of  his  emotions. 

The  most  intimate  of  the  letters  are  those  written  to 
Charlotte  von  Stein,  who  soon  became  his  muse  and  con- 
fidant.    She  was  a  wife  and  the  mother  of  several  chil- 
*■  dren,  her  husband  being  the  duke's  equerry.    Goethe  was 


66  GOETHE 

introduced  to  her  not  long  after  his  arrival  in  Weimar, 
found  in  her  a  new  ideal  of  womanhood  at  its  very  best, 
and  presently  began  to  pay  homage  to  her  in  the  language 
of  an  ardent  lover.  She  attracted  him  not  by  her  beauty, 
but  by  a  certain  soulful  benignity,  as  of  one  chastened 
by  experience,  superior  to  folly,  and  secure  in  her  own 
adorable  goodness.  So  at  least  his  imagination  con- 
ceived her ;  not,  however,  until  she  had  repeatedly  checked 
his  ardors.  Her  letters  are  lost,  but  it  is  clear  enough 
from  his  that  his  adoration  was  more  than  welcome,  if 
only  it  were  kept  within  Platonic  limits  and  did  not  com- 
promise her.  At  first  he  was  disposed  to  rebel.  In  a 
letter  of  May  24,  1776,  he  writes : 

So  then  this  relation,  the  purest,  most  beautiful,  truest,  that 
I  have  ever  had  with  any  woman  except  my  sister,  is  to  be  dis- 
turbed! ...  I  will  not  see  you,  your  presence  would  make 
me  sad.  If  I  am  not  to  be  near  you  your  love  helps  me  as 
little  as  the  love  of  the  absent  ones  in  which  I  am  so  rich.  In 
the  moment  of  need  it  is  the  living  presence  which  decides 
everything,  which  soothes  and  strengthens.  The  absent  friend 
arrives  with  his  hose  when  the  fire  is  out.  And  all  this  for  the 
world's  sake !  The  world,  which  can  be  nothing  to  me,  will  not 
allow  you  to  be  anything  to  me  either.  They  know  not  what 
they  do. 

By  this  time,  however,  Frau  von  Stein  seems  to  have 
convinced  herself  that  she  had  nothing  to  lose  and  much 
to  gain  by  becoming  the  confidant  of  a  poet  and  letting 
herself  be  worshiped  as  a  superior  being.  At  any  rate 
the  pair  took  no  pains  to  conceal  their  liking  for  each 
other.  It  was  known  to  everybody  and  accepted  by  every- 
body, Stein  among  the  rest,  as  a  matter  of  course.  Goethe 
was  much  at  her  house  and  wrote  to  her  very  often — 
sometimes  twice  a  day,  or  even  when  they  chanced  to 


NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR  67 

be  under  the  same  roof.  He  addressed  her  as  dearest 
lady,  golden  lady,  angel,  soother,  comforter.  She  it  was, 
he  assured  her,  whom  he  loved  as  he  had  loved  no  woman 
before;  who  calmed  his  troubled  soul  and  gave  him  peace 
in  his  vague  unrest. 

But  even  with  the  help  of  his  madonna  he  did  not 
quickly  subdue  his  tendency  to  moodiness.  It  was  com- 
paratively easy  to  steel  himself  against  real  troubles  and 
vexations;  not  so  easy,  however,  to  conquer  that  inner 
turbulence  which  had  driven  Werther  to  despair.  The 
pathologist  may  rightly  view  this  as  a  morbid  and  peril- 
ous symptom,  due  to  his  having  lived  for  years  in  a  state 
of  chronic  emotional  tension,  without  the  right  outlet 
for  his  energies  and  aspirations,  and  to  his  having  con- 
vinced himself  that  the  whole  goodness  of  life  was 
summed  up  in  feeling  and  its  artistic  expression.  At 
the  same  time  this  restlessness  was  a  part  of  his  poet's 
^  dower,  without  which  he  had  not  been  Goethe.  As  such 
it  presently  found  its  appropriate  symbol  in  Orestes  tor- 
mented to  madness  by  the  Furies  and  healed  by  the  dis- 
covery of  a  noble-minded  sister.  At  Weimar,  when  the 
demons  tormented  him,  he  often  had  recourse  to  travel, 
getting  comfort  and  renewed  strength  from  nature,  from 
intercourse  with  simple  folk,  or  from  mere  observation 
of  the  motley  human  spectacle. 

Thus  in  December,  1777,  he  made  a  trip  alone  and  in- 
cognito to  the  Harz  Mountains  and  climbed  the  Brocken 
amid  snow  and  ice  at  a  time  when  the  feat  was  deemed 
impossible.  '  How  I  have  learned  on  this  dark  journey,' 
he  wrote  to  Frau  von  Stein,  '  to  love  that  class  of  men 
we  call  the  lower,  but  which  for  God  is  assuredly  the 
highest ! '    The  following  May  he  visited  Berlin  with  the 


68  GOETHE 

duke.  *  I  have  been  right  close  to  old  Fritz,'  he  wrote, 
'  I  have  seen  his  bearing,  his  gold,  silver,  marble,  apes, 
parrots,  and  torn  curtains,  and  have  heard  his  own 
scoundrels  arguing  about  the  great  man ! ' 

Of  greater  importance  was  a  journey  to  Switzerland 
which  he  took  in  the  fall  of  the  year  1779 — again  in  com- 
pany with  the  duke,  whom  he  wished  to  infect  with  a 
love  of  the  mountains  and  of  plain  untitled  folk.  Before 
setting  out  he  wrote  gleefully  to  his  mother,  directing 
her  how  to  prepare  her  house  for  the  reception  of  a  reign- 
ing prince  and  his  retinue.  The  duke  was  to  sleep  on 
a  straw-sack  in  the  '  little  room,'  and  all  the  other 
arrangements  were  to  be  on  a  like  plane  of  Spartan  sim- 
plicity. After  a  few  pleasant  days  at  Frankfort  the  party 
proceeded  up  the  Rhine.  At  Sesenheim  Goethe  visited 
the  Brion  family,  who  received  him  with  effusive  delight. 
Friederike  was  glad  to  recall  the  old  memories,  her  par- 
ents assured  him  that  he  had  grown  younger.  It  was  all 
very  comforting — nowhere  a  hint  of  anything  painful 
in  the  past.  At  Strassburg  he  called  on  Lib,  now  a  wife 
and  a  mother,  and  here  too  he  found  only  joy  and  admi- 
ration. And  then  came  two  bracing,  soul-renewing 
months  in  the  Swiss  Alps.  Again  he  climbed  the  Gott- 
hard,  looked  over  into  Italy,  and  again  turned  back,  say- 
ing to  himself,  '  Not  yet,  but  before  I  die.'  The  record 
of  this  journey,  faithfully  kept  for  Charlotte  von  Stein, 
abounds  in  expressions  which  tell  of  a  renewed  joy  in 
life  and  of  a  deep  satisfaction  in  the  sanative  and  invig- 
orating power  of  nature. 

It  is  next  in  order  to  speak  of  Goethe's  official  life 
and  the  studies  that  grew  out  of  it.  The  first  task  that 
fell  to  his  hands  was  that  of  a  commissioner  of  mines — 


NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR  69 

a  rather  unpromising  field  since  the  mineral  weajth  of 
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach  was  quite  insignificant.  There 
were  at  Ilmenau,  however,  some  old  mines  that  had  been 
abandoned  and  allowed  to  fill  with  water.  The  question 
was  whether  they  could  be  reopened  and  made  to  pay. 
To  this  problem  the  new  minister  addressed  himself  with 
zeal  by  taking  up  the  study  of  mineralogy  and  seeking 
to  familiarize  himself  with  the  geology  of  the  duchy. 
What  interested  him  was  not  so  much  to  learn  the  names 
and  properties  of  minerals  as  to  get  an  idea  of  the  ge- 
netic process  by  which  nature  had  sculptured  the  land. 
Why  had  she  placed  one  species  of  rock  here  and  another 
there?  What  was  the  order  and  the  logic  of  her  pro- 
cedure? In  these  pursuits  he  found  great  satisfaction, 
tho  they  came  to  nothing  from  the  practical  point  of 
view.  His  first  reports  held  out  the  hope  that  something 
might  be  done  with  the  Ilmenau  mines,  which  had  been 
worked  for  argentiferous  copper  schist,  but  in  the  end 
they  were  given  up  as  hopeless.  *  It  has  cost  me  much 
time,  trouble,  and  money,'  he  said,  '  but  in  return  I  have 
learnt  something  and  acquired  views  of  nature  which  I 
would  not  part  with  at  any  price.' 

Branching  out  from  the  study  of  the  rocks,  he  began 
to  concern  himself  with  botany  and  anatomy,  more  espe- 
cially with  the  comparative  morphology  of  the  vertebrate 
skeleton.  It  seemed  to  him  curious  that  the  study  of 
plants  should  consist  so  largely  in  dissecting  them  in 
order  to  find  out  their  Latin  name  according  to  the  sys- 
tem of  Linne.  This  procedure  seemed  to  him  quite  futile. 
What  he  wanted  to  know  was  the  plan  or  idea  by 
which  nature  worked.  His  study  of  skulls  and  skeletons 
soon  convinced  him  that  '  man  is  very  closely  akin  to 


70  GOETHE 

the  animals/  and  that  everything  in  nature  had  resulted 
from  the  working  of  law  or  laws.  What  were  these  laws 
and  how  did  they  operate  ?  By  such  inquiries  he  was  led 
gradually  to  those  views  of  organic  evolution  and  those 
discoveries — small  in  themselves  but  of  large  import  for 
the  understanding  of  the  whole  Goethe — which  have 
given  him  a  modest  place  in  the  history  of  science. 

In  1779  he  became  commissioner  of  war  and  high- 
ways, and  in  this  capacity  had  occasion  to  go  about  a 
great  deal  attending  to  the  recruiting  of  soldiers  and  the 
building  of  roads.  Thus  he  was  brought  into  contact 
with  the  plain  people  and  led  to  ponder  on  the  relation 
of  soil  and  climate  and  other  physical  conditions  to  social 
life  and  economic  welfare.  In  1782  he  received  a  patent 
of  nobility — an  event  about  which  he  declared  that  he 
'  could  think  just  nothing  at  all ' — and  was  made  presi- 
dent of  the  chambers,  thus  becoming  the  chief  adminis- 
trator of  the  duchy.  He  found  the  finances  in  disorder 
and  set  about  restoring  the  balance  between  income  and 
expenditure.  For  about  two  years  he  devoted  himself 
mainly,  in  the  end  with  complete  success,  to  this  branch 
of  the  public  business.  Withal  he  gave  much  attention 
to  educational  affairs,  particularly  to  the  University  of 
Jena,  and  it  was  he  who  planned  the  charming  little 
Weimar  park. 

Thus  had  the  morbid,  emotional,  introspective  poet 
developed  into  a  self-assured  man  of  the  world  and  a 
masterful  statesman.  To  be  sure,  his  sphere  of  activity 
was  small.  He  had  not  been  tried  in  the  crucible  of 
world-politics,  nor  called  upon  to  decide  great  issues  of 
national  war  and  peace.  Still  there  were  problems  and 
difficulties  enough,  and  he  handled  them  to  the  satisfac- 


NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR  71 

tion  of  his  prince  and  the  leading  men  of  the  little  state. 
With  truth  it  could  be  said  of  him  that  he  came  and  saw 
and  conquered.  By  his  devotion  to  duty  and  the  charm 
of  his  personal  bearing  he  gradually  won  the  cordial 
esteem  of  all  but  a  few  small  souls  who  could  not  forget 
that  he  was  not  of  noble  birth  and  were  jealous  of  his 
influence  with  the  duke.  The  outside  world,  if  they 
looked  that  way,  saw  a  proof  that  poetic  genius  was  not 
always  incompatible  with  vigorous  and  successful  state- 
craft 

It  was  but  natural  that  such  pursuits  and  responsi- 
bilities should  produce  little  by  little  a  sobering  and 
clarifying  effect.  After  all,  feeling  was  not  everything,. 
Work  was  also  good  for  the  soul.  Form  had  its  due 
place  in  life  as  in  art.  The  reign  of  law  was  everywhere, 
and  fascinating  questions  presented  themselves  on  every 
hand  to  the  inquiring  mind.  There  was  joy  to  be  had 
in  the  life  of  the  intellect.  In  the  long  light  of  time 
nothing  was  meaningless,  nothing  wholly  bad,  tho  much 
could  be  improved.  To  know  this  interesting  world  as 
it  really  is  and  work  for  a  definite  betterment  was  prefer- 
able to  fretting  in  despair  over  the  nature  of  things.  The 
only  object  of  revolt  could  be  to  prepare  the  way  for  a 
saner  order;  insurgency  was  not  itself  a  word  of  wisdom. 
Nature's  method  was  that  of  bit-by-bit  progress,  not  that 
of  violence  and  eruption.  The  excellence  and  dignity  of 
human  nature  were  not  best  shown  in  a  riot  of  emotion, 
but  in  the  stedfast  control  of  emotion  by  the  truth- 
seeking  reason. 

Among  the  various  rills  that  fed  this  stream  of  thought 
we  must  reckon  in  the  reading  of  the  '  Ethics  '  of  Spinoza, 
a  book  to  which  Goethe  himself  expressly  ascribes  great 


72  GOETHE 

influence  in  the  shaping  of  his  views.  He  says  that  he 
found  in  Spinoza  that  which  '  quieted  his  passions  and 
afforded  him  a  large  and  free  outlook  over  the  world 
of  sense  and  of  morals.'  What  especially  drew  him  to 
the  Jew  philosopher,  we  are  told,  was  the  boundless  unself- 
ishness of  his  doctrine,  as  implied  in  the  saying,  *  Whoso 
truly  loves  God  will  not  expect  that  God  shall  love  him 
in  return.'  Goethe  had  certainly  read  Spinoza  at  Frank- 
fort, but  at  that  time  he  did  not  fully  understand  him; 
so  that  it  was  not  until  afterwards  that  the  seed  then 
planted  bore  its  characteristic  fruit.  In  the  pre-Wei- 
marian  Goethe  there  is  really  very  little  of  the  Spinozan 
temper — hardly  more  than  occasional  hints  of  it.  But 
at  Weimar  the  '  intellectual  love  of  God  '  gradually  be- 
came, it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say,  the  dominant  note 
of  all  his  thinking. 

In  circumstances  such  as  have  been  described  it  is 
not  very  strange  that  poetic  production  languished.  Not 
one  of  the  more  famous  works  of  Goethe  reached  its 
final  form  during  that  first  decade  in  Weimar.  It  was 
not  merely  that  there  were  at  first  too  many  distractions, 
and  later  on  too  many  official  cares;  the  deeper  cause  of 
the  seeming  steriHty  of  this  period  was  the  difficulty  of 
finding  a  form  suited  to  the  new  ideas  and  ideals.  The 
old  style  would  no  longer  do;  he  had  become  alienated 
from  his  former  self,  and  the  new  self  demanded  a  more 
delicate  instrument  of  expression.  And  so  he  groped 
along  for  years  to  find  the  way  which  leads  from  the 
realistic  prose  of  '  Werther '  and  '  Clavigo '  to  the  ex- 
quisite blank  verse  of  '  Iphigenie  '  and  '  Tasso.' 

Meanwhile  he  bravely  performed  his  part  as  a  purveyor 
of  dramatic  bagatelles  for  the  amateur  stage  of  the  court 


NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR  73 

circle.  Down  to  1780  there  was  no  theater  where  pro- 
fessional actors  could  appear,  so  the  local  enthusiasts  gave 
their  plays  here  and  there,  transporting  their  modest 
properties  from  a  cheap  hired  hall  in  the  city  to  the  park 
■at  Belvedere,  the  '  heights  of  Ettersburg  or  Tiefurt's 
vale,'  according  as  whim  or  convenience  dictated.  In 
point  of  talent  the  mainstay  of  the  Weimar  Thespians 
was  Corona  Schroter,  an  accomplished  actress  and  singer 
whom  Goethe  liked  so  well  that  he  wished  God  might 
give  him  such  a  woman  for  a  wife.  She  was  the  first 
Iphigenie,  for  her  he  wrote  '  Proserpina,'  and  it  was 
partly  her  talent  that  kept  alive  his  interest  in  musical 
drama.  '  Proserpina  '  is  a  serious  poetic  monodrama 
which  has  no  other  aim  than  to  revivify  the  Greek  myth 
and  make  the  goddess  seem  humanly  real.  Its  effect  was 
ruined  at  Weimar  by  giving  it  as  an  intermezzo  in  the 
*  Triumph  of  Sentimentalism,'  a  satirical  burlesque  in 
which  Goethe  made  fun  of  the  whole  sentimental  tribe, 
himself  along  with  the  rest.  The  rather  tame  '  Lila  '  has 
for  its  theme  the  healing  of  a  disordered  mind  by  cleverly 
humoring  its  vagaries.  In  its  original  form  it  alluded 
delicately  to  the  strained  relations  of  Karl  August  and 
his  wife.  The  '  Fisher-maid,'  beginning  with  the  fa- 
mous ballad  '  Elf-king,'  was  played  in  the  evening  on 
the  river-bank  at  Tiefurt,  with  pretty  torchlight  effects. 
Best  of  all  among  the  lighter  pieces  is  the  '  Birds,'  a 
laughable  modernization  of  Aristophanes.  The  serious 
one-act  play  '  Brother  and  Sister,'  written  in  October, 
1776,  treats  of  a  girl's  passionate  love  for  a  kind  guardian 
whom  she  has  wrongly  supposed  to  be  her  brother.  If 
it  reflects  any  actual  human  relationship,  such  as  that 
of  Goethe  to  his  real  sister  Cornelia,  or  to  his  sister-by- 


74  GOETHE 

renunciation,  Charlotte  von  Stein,  the  reflection  is  at  any 
rate  very  dim  and  indirect. 

Such  plays,  addressed  as  they  were  to  local  conditions 
and  largely  dependent  for  their  effect  on  personal  rela- 
tions and  allusions,  are  naturally  much  less  interesting 
to  the  reader  of  today  than  are  the  poems  which  show 
how  Goethe's  nature  reacted  to  his  new  experience.  The 
longing  for  peace  found  immortal  expression  in  the  two 
beautiful  evening-songs,  '  Thou  who  art  in  heaven"  and 
'Over  all  the  heights';  the  one  dating  from  January, 
1776,  the  other  from  September,  1783.  Nature  begins 
to  speak  a  more  various  and  subtle  language.  In  the 
fine  stanzas  'To  the  Moon'  (1778)  she  utters  a  sooth- 
ing benison,  while  in  the  '  Song  of  the  Spirits  over 
the  Waters'  (1779),  suggested  by  the  Staubbach  at 
Lauterbrunnen,  she  is  a  pensive  philosopher  developing 
profound  analogies  between  the  falling  water  and  the 
human  soul.  Sometimes  she  is  a  teacher  of  courage, 
stedfastness,  and  self-control.  In  the  '  Harz  Journey  in 
Winter'  (1777)  the  obscure  language  seems  to  wrestle 
in  vain  with  a  rush  of  overwhelming  impressions.  In 
general  it  must  be  said  that  the  true  singing  mood  came 
but  rarely  during  these  years.  It  should  be  remembered, 
however,  that  a  number  of  good  songs  are  found  in  vari- 
ous musical  dramas,  while  others  went  into  '  Wilhelm 
Meister.'  Finally,  there  are  the  two  splendid  ballads, 
./  Elf-king '  and  the  '  Fisherman.* 

The  poetry  of  reflection  and  mental  readjustment 
flowed  in  a  more  abundant  stream.  The  '  Poetic  Mission 
of  Hans  Sachs,'  written  in  1776,  is  a  warm  yet  temperate 
eulogy  of  the  neglected  folk-poet  of  Niirnberg,  who  was 
thereby  restored  to  his  rights.     In  '  Mieding's  Death ' 


NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR  75 

(1782)  we  have  a  loyal  friend's  tribute  to  the  able  fac- 
totum who  provided  stage  and  scenery  for  the  plays. 
Here  better  than  anywhere  else  we  glimpse  the  more 
ideal  aspect  of  those  modest  histrionic  efforts.  The  noble 
poem  '  Ilmenau,'  sent  as  a  birthday  gift  to  Karl  August 
on  the  3rd  of  September,  1783,  is  a  sort  of  elegy  in  which 
Goethe  reviews  his  life  in  Weimar,  hints  of  his  high 
hopes  and  their  imperfect  realization,  and  characterizes 
some  of  the  friends  who  have  stood  nearest  him.  The 
greater  and  better  part  is  devoted  to  the  duke  himself. 
There  is  hardly  a  finer  poem  of  friendship  in  the  German 
language.  The  drift  of  his  mind  in  the  direction  of  a 
new  humanism  as  the  ideal  goal  in  ethics  is  seen  in  the 
poem  '  The  Divine,'  which  might  equally  well  have  been 
called  *  The  Human.'  Beginning  with  the  words,  '  Let 
man  be  noble,  helpful,  and  good,'  it  argues  the  thesis 
that  these  qualities  alone  distinguish  man  from  all  beings 
that  we  know. 

Some  time  in  the  early  eighties  Goethe  conceived  the 
idea  of  a  long  narrative  poem  which  should  boldly  set 
forth  his  ideals  of  life  in  the  form  of  a  romantic  tale  of 
symbolic  import.  It  was  to  be  written  in  ottava  rima,  a 
fact  in  itself  significant  of  a  growing  willingness  to  sub- 
ject himself  to  the  definite  limitations  of  an  approved 
artistic  form.  It  was  probably  his  well-known  admira- 
tion of  Wieland's  '  Oberon '  (1780),  coupled  with  his 
later  study  of  Tasso  and  Ariosto,  which  begot  the  wish 
to  try  his  hand  on  the  stricter  form  of  the  romantic  eight- 
line  stanza.  The  poem  was  to  be  called  the  *  Mysteries  ' 
and  to  set  forth  the  experiences  of  a  band  of  twelve 
knights,  representing  as  many  different  religions,  who 
had  withdrawn  from  the  vanities  of  life  and  banded 


76  GOETHE 

themselves  together  in  a  secret  order  for  the  purpose  of 
learning  the  higher  wisdom  under  the  tuition  of  a  mys- 
terious sage  called  Humanus.  The  notion  of  the  secret 
society  as  the  repository  of  precious  esoteric  truth  not 
discoverable  on  the  highways  of  Hfe  was  just  then  very 
much  in  favor.  The  new  order  of  Illuminati,  or  Per- 
fectibilists,  founded  in  1776  as  a  sort  of  fresh  avatar  of 
the  older  Rosicrucians,  was  attracting  a  great  deal  of 
attention  with  its  awesome  hierarchy  of  members  pledged 
to  strict  obedience  and  rising  gradually  from  '  novice ' 
and  '  minerval '  through  the  various  grades  of  free- 
masonry to  '  priest,'  '  magus,'  and  *  king.'  Ggethe  him- 
self joined  the  freemasons  in  1780  and  remained  there- 
after a  loyal  member  of  the  lodge. 

The  poem  was  never  finished.  Its  interest  would  have 
culminated  in  the  wonderful  teaching  of  Humanus, 
whereby  the  various  members  of  the  order  would  gradu- 
ally slough  off  all  the  narrowness  and  contentiousness  of 
creed,  tradition,  and  nationality,  and  stand  forth  as  the 
purified  apostles  of  human  brotherhood  and  active  well- 
doing. (We  see  that  Goethe's  mind  was  here  moving, 
through  a  haze  of  romantic  mysticism,  toward  a  doctrine 
which  is  essentially  that  of  Lessing's  '  Nathan '  and 
Herder's  '  Ideas.' ,  By  way  of  introduction  he  wrote  four- 
teen superb  stanzas  in  which  he  represented  himself  as 
taking  a  glorious  morning  walk  and  receiving,  from  out 
the  dissolving  mists,  the  '  veil  of  Poesy  from  the  hand 
of  Truth.'  These  lines  he  afterwards  decided  to  place 
at  the  head  of  his  poetic  works  under  the  title  of  '  Dedi- 
cation.' Of  the  '  wondrous  song '  yclept  the  '  Mysteries  ' 
he  wrote  but  forty-four  stanzas,  which  barely  carry  us 
over  the  threshold  of  the  great  argument.    In  after  years 


NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR  77 

the  author  of  '  Faust '  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
final  wisdom  is  to  be  found,  not  by  withdrawing  from 
life  into  the  cloistered  seclusion  of  a  mystic  brotherhood, 
but  by  living  it  out  bravely  in  the  haunts  of  men. 

It  has  already  been  remarked  that  none  of  the  major 
works  of  Goethe  was  completed  during  his  novitiate  in 
Weimar.  He  did  some  work  on  '  Egmont '  at  different 
times,  none  at  all  on  '  Faust.'  In  the  spring  of  1779, 
amid  the  distractions  and  banalities  incident  to  the  new 
business  of  recruiting  soldiers,  he  wrote,  or  rather  dic- 
tated, the  first  draft  of  '  Iphigenie.'  It  was  performed 
in  April,  with  Goethe  himself  as  Orestes,  Knebel  as 
Thoas,  Prince  Constantin  as  Pylades.  It  was  an  un- 
usually short  play,  severely  simple  in  structure,  lofty  in 
style,  and  strictly  observant  of  the  once  despised  unities. 
The  form  was  prose,  partly  with  and  partly  without  an 
iambic  cadence.  The  characters  and  plot  were  conceived 
substantially  as  they  appear  in  the  final  revision,  and  the 
effect  of  the  performance  was  good.  Its  author  noticed 
^with  pleasure  that  '  pure  souls '  enjoyed  it.  But  he  was 
not  content  with  the  form,  which  was  neither  prose  nor 
verse  and  had  many  clinging  remnants  of  the  old  realistic 
manner.  He  saw  that  he  must  get  rid  of  these  defects, 
yet  he  did  not  at  once  decide  in  favor  of  verse.  In  1780 
he  rewrote  it  all,  preserving  the  prose  form  at  least  to  the 
eye,  but  still  it  did  not  satisfy  him.  After  this  the  teasing 
problem  of  finding  a  style  suited  to  the  lofty,  almost 
ethereal,  character  of  his  heroine,  was  laid  aside  until 
the  year  of  his  departure  for  Italy. 

In  the  spring  of  1780  he  began  '  Torquato  Tasso.'  No 
wonder  the  theme  attracted  him,  since  it  presented  such 
a  complete  parallel  to  his  own  position :  a  hyper-sensitive 


78  GOETHE 

poetic  dreamer  living  at  a  petty  court,  enjoying  the  friend- 
ship of  a  high-minded  prince,  in  love  with  a  high-born 
lady  whom  he  could  never  marry,  viewed  with  jealous 
dislike  by  '  practical '  men  who  thought  themselves  better 
than  he.  Two  acts  of  a  prose  '  Tasso '  were  written  in 
1780  and  1 78 1,  and  then  this  enterprise  also  came  to  a 
halt.  In  this  case,  probably,  the  cessation  of  work  was 
due  not  only  to  dissatisfaction  with  the  prose  form,  but 
also  to  a  lack  of  clearness  as  to  the  essential  import  of 
the  play  as  a  whole. 

To  this  same  period  "(1781-1783)  belongs  the  puzzHng 
fragment  '  Elpenor.'  The  play  was  intended  to  com- 
memorate the  birth  of  a  long  '  hoped-for '  crown  prince, 
but  from  the  extant  portion,  consisting  of  the  first  act  and 
a  part  of  the  second,  it  is  quite  impossible  to  make  out 
the  design.  Enough  that  Goethe  afterwards  characterized 
it,  in  a  letter  to  Schiller,  as  an  instance  of  '  incredible 
blundering  in  the  choice  of  a  subject  and  a  warning 
example  of  God  knows  what  besides.' 

Finally,  there  was  '  Wilhelm  Meister's  Theatrical  Mis- 
sion,' a  novel  in  which  Goethe  set  out  to  record  his  own 
experience  of  play-acting  and  incidentally  to  portray  the 
"  histrionic  conditions  of  the  country  at  large.  There  was 
just  then  an  increasing  disposition  to  think  and  talk  about 
the  artistic  side  of  the  actor's  calling.  Young  Schiller, 
making  an  address  at  Mannheim  in  1784,  compared  the 
social  utility  of  the  theater  to  that  of  the  law  and  the 
church.  In  short,  it  was  in  the  air  to  magnify  the  theater, 
and  this  should  be  borne  in  mind  by  the  reader  of  '  Wil- 
helm Meister,'  which  its  author  seems  to  have  regarded, 
for  a  while  at  least,  as  the  most  important  of  all  his 
literary  projects.     Beginning  in  1777,  he  worked  on  it 


NOVITIATE  IN  WEIMAR  79 

intermittently  for  eight  years.  His  diary  and  letters 
refer  to  it  very  frequently.  By  1785  he  had  completed 
six  books  and  carried  the  story  to  the  point  where  Wil- 
helm,  still  hopeful  of  his  mission,  notwithstanding  all  the 
disgusts  and  disillusionments  that  have  come  to  him  in 
the  course  of  his  vagabond  life  with  the  actor-folk,  de- 
cides to  join  the  company  of  his  friend  Serlo  and  to  seek 
in  the  theater  the  goal  of  his  higher  aspirations.  These 
six  books  were  afterwards  rewritten  and  condensed,  so 
that  they  correspond  very  nearly  to  the  first  four  books 
of  the  famous  novel  which  appeared  in  1796  under  the 
changed  title  *  Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprenticeship.'  ^ 

What  was  the  *  mission '  of  this  unheroic  hero  whose 
character  includes  so  much  that  is  Goethe  along  with  so 
much  that  is  not,  and  whose  histrionic  efforts,  amorous 
entanglements,  romantic  adventures,  and  philosophic 
opinions  are  recounted  with  such  excess  of  leisurely  par- 
ticularity? There  is  little  room  for  doubt  that  when  he 
began  the  novel  Goethe  had  in  view  a  sort  of  antidote 
to  '  Werther.'  With  a  nature  very  like  Werther's,  Wil- 
helm Meister  was  to  be  saved  by  finding  something  to  do; 
something  that  would  lift  him  out  of  the  dulness  and 
banality  of  middle-class  life,  employ  his  artistic  ability, 
and  give  him  the  sense  of  living  to  some  purpose.  The 
title  did  not  mean  at  first  what  it  came  to  mean  in  the 

^  In  1784  Goethe  began  sending  a  copy  of  his  manuscript  in  in- 
stallments to  his  Ziirich  friend,  Frau  Barbara  Schulthess.  This 
lady  and  her  daughter  were  so  delighted  with  the  story  that  they 
proceeded  to  make  a  copy  of  it,  in  order  that  they  might  continue 
to  possess  the  treasure  after  the  loaned  manuscript  had  been  re- 
turned. It  was  this  copy  of  a  copy  which  was  lately  discovered 
in  Ziirich  by  G.  Billeter  and  was  soon  afterwards  (1910)  published, 
both  by  the  house  of  Gotta  and  in  the  Weimar  edition  of  Goethe's 
works,  under  the  editorship  of  H.  Maync. 


8o  GOETHE 

course  of  time,  namely,  Wilhelm  Meister's  vain  dream 
of  a  theatrical  mission.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  really 
to  become  a  good  actor,  perhaps  the  director  of  a  theater, 
and  to  find  satisfaction  in  working  for  higher  standards 
of  dramatic  performance. 

But  why,  one  asks,  did  not  Goethe  select  as  the  saving 
art  the  one  in  which  he  himself  had  found  the  greatest 
pleasure  ?  Why  did  he  not  plan  a  '  poetic  '  instead  of  a 
'  theatrical '  mission  for  his  hero  ?  The  answer  is,  in  the 
first  place,  that  Wilhelm  Meister  really  is  a  dramatic  poet 
as  well  as  an  actor.  Secondly,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  in  1777  Goethe  was  not  yet  clear  as  to  his  own  poetic 
mission.  He  was  still  hesitating  between  painting  and 
poetry,  and  for  the  time  being  had  become  deeply  inter- 
ested in  the  staging  and  acting  of  plays.  Finally,  the 
public  ado  about '  Werther  '  had  shown  him  that  he  might 
well  lean  heavily,  but  must  not  lean  too  heavily,  on  his 
own  personal  experience.  So  he  made  the  first  part  of 
the  story,  up  to  Wilhelm's  love-affair  with  the  actress 
Mariane,  frankly  autobiographic.  After  that  it  is  a 
fictitious  narrative  in  which  the  real  Goethe,  in  his  actual 
relation  to  persons  and  places,  is  hardly  ever  discernible. 
The  making-over  of  the  tale  into  '  Wilhelm  Meister's 
Apprenticeship '  will  be  considered  further  on. 


CHAPTER   V 

SOJOURN    IN    ITALY    AND    ITS 
CONSEQUENCES 

Toward  the  end  of  his  first  decade  in  Weimar  Goethe 
began  to  feel,  very  poignantly  at  times,  the  need  of  a 
change  of  scene.  It  was  not  so  much  that  he  was  over- 
worked, for  of  late  the  pressure  of  public  business  had 
relaxed  somewhat.  The  particular  problems  that  had 
engaged  him  were  solved  or  in  a  fair  way  to  solution. 
He  had  time  enough,  but  no  clear  vision  of  what  it  was 
best  to  do.  He  was  unable  to  apply  himself  to  any  one 
thing  until  it  was  finished.  His  poetic  impulse  was  way- 
ward and  changeable,  ever  sending  him  off  in  some  new 
direction.  He  was  dependent  on  his  moods  and  his  moods 
were  capricious.  Add  to  this  that  the  pursuit  of  scientific 
studies  had  become  almost  a  passion;  so  that  he  was 
oftener  minded  to  puzzle  over  some  curious  stone,  or 
planft,  or  skull,  than  to  work  at  literary  projects  which 
had  no  root  in  the  living  present,  however  much  they 
might  have  interested  him  the  day  before  yesterday.  And 
so  he  worked  fitfully  at  this  and  that,  becoming  more 
and  more  oppressed  by  a  sense  of  something  wrong — 
something  that  might  perhaps  be  cured  by  a  visit  to  the 
land  that  he  had  twice  looked  down  on  with  longing  from 
the  summit  of  the  Gotthard. 

For  ten  years  he  had  published  nothing  but  a  few  short 

8x 


82  GOETHE 

poems,  so  that  the  outside  world  had  no  choice  but  to 
infer  that  he  was  altogether  lost  to  literature.  A  writer 
in  an  '  Almanac'  of  the  year  1781  said  of  him,  using  a 
simile  borrowed  from  Lessing : 

Many  years  will  pass  before  we  again  have  a  Goethe  who 
will  honor  us  with  Berlichingens,  Clavigos,  Werthers,  etc. 
Perhaps  he  can  no  longer  do  it.  Perhaps  that  living  spring 
that  works  its  way  up  by  its  own  power  and  shoots  aloft  in 
such  copious,  such  fresh  and  limpid  streams,  has  ceased  to 
flow. 

Meanwhile  the  works  of  his  youth  were  circulating  in 
pirated  editions  which  brought  him  no  income,  were 
carelessly  printed,  and  contained  some  things  which  he 
had  now  no  pride  in  fathering.  To  block  the  piratical 
game  he  decided  to  issue  an  authentic  edition  of  his 
works  consisting  of  eight  small  volumes.  A  publishing 
contract  was  made  with  Goschen  of  Leipsic  in  June, 
1786,  and  curiously  enough  it  was  stipulated  that  several 
of  the  works — '  Egmont,'  *  Tasso,'  '  Elpenor,'  '  Faust,' — 
might  appear  in  fragmentary  form  if  their  author  should 
prove  unable  to  finish  them.  This  weakness  for  the 
*  fragment '  as  a  means  of  getting  a  subject  off  his  mind 
and  satisfying  a  publisher  in  the  matter  of  space-filling 
grew  upon  him  with  the  lapse  of  years  and  made  much 
trouble  in  one  way  and  another.  He  now  set  about  the 
task  of  revision,  and  the  temper  that  he  brought  to  it 
may  be  inferred  from  a  sentence  in  a  letter  of  June  25, 
1786 :  "  I  am  revising  '  Werther  '  and  find  that  the  author 
did  ill  not  to  shoot  himself  after  writing  it." 

After  spending  July  and  August  in  Karlsbad,  working 
with  Herder's  assistance  on  the  revision  of  his' first  four 
volumes,  he  wrote  the  Duke  of  Weimar  that  he  would 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  83 

like  an  indefinite  leave  of  absence.  Without  waiting  for 
a  reply,  since  he  felt  sure  that  his  request  would  be 
granted,  he  stole  away  quietly  before  daylight  on  the 
morning  of  September  3,  traveling  alone  and  incognito 
and  taking  care  to  conceal  his  plans  even  from  his  most 
intimate  friends.  Hurrying  forward  by  way  of  Regens- 
burg  and  Munich  he  reached  the  Brenner  Pass  on  the 
8th,  Verona  on  the  14th.  Up  to  this  point  the  careful 
diary  that  he  kept  for  Charlotte  von  Stein  is  mainly 
occupied  with  observations  on  the  rocks,  the  contour  of 
the  land,  the  vegetation,  the  clouds,  the  people,  and  their 
ways.  He  was  testing  the  sufficiency  of  his  scientific 
knowledge,  proving  the  clearness  of  his  eye,  and  wonder- 
ing whether  the  *  wrinkles  that  had  formed  in  his  soul  * 
could  be  smoothed  out.  He  noted  that  merely  doing  with- 
out a  servant  was  renewing  the  elasticity  of  his  mind. 
At  Verona  the  remains  of  antiquity  and  the  splendors 
of  Renaissance  art  began  to  disclose  themselves  and  to 
thrill  him  with  that  joyous  excitement  which  is  the 
appointed  portion  of  the  well-prepared  Northerner  when 
he  first  sets  foot  on  Italian  soil.  In  our  day,  when  travel 
in  Italy  has  become  so  easy  and  so  common,  it  is  at  once 
diverting  and  pathetic  to  follow  Goethe  in  his  wander- 
ings, to  read  his  notes,  and  to  observe  how  his  hungry 
soul  fed  and  was  satisfied.    He  wrote: 

It  lies  in  my  nature  readily  and  joyfully  to  reverence  what 
is  great  and  beautiful.  The  opportunity  to  develop  this  faculty 
day  by  day  and  hour  by  hour  by  the  aid  of  such  glorious  ob- 
jects gives  rise  to  the  most  blissful  of  all  feelings. 

He  remained  four  days  at  Verona,  visiting  the  amphi- 
theater,  the   palaces,    monuments,    and   galleries.     The 


84  GOETHE 

examples  of  Roman  sculpture  that  he  found  in  the 
Palazzo  Bevilacqua  affected  him  deeply.  After  a  week 
at  Vicenza,  where  he  was  especially  interested  in  the 
buildings  designed  by  the  town's  famous  son  Palladio, 
he  pushed  on  by  way  of  Padua  to  the  '  beaver  republic ' 
of  Venice.  Needless  to  say  that  he  was  fascinated  by 
the  witcheries  of  the  '  wonderful  island-city.'  His  notes, 
however,  have  less  to  say  of  Venetian  painting  than  of 
Palladio's  buildings,  the  canals,  the  gondolas,  thQ  ways 
of  the  people,  the  comedy  of  masks.  After  a  fortnight's 
sojourn  he  wrote: 

Had  I  not  taken  the  resolution  which  I  am  now  carrying  out 
I  should  have  perished;  so  ripe  had  my  desire  become  to  see 
these  objects  with  my  own  eyes. 

On  the  14th  of  October  he  set  out  for  Rome,  halting 
first  at  Ferrara,  which  he  had  years  before  pictured  men- 
tally in  writing  upon  '  Tasso.'  But  its  former  glory  was 
gone  and  so  his  short  stay  there  was  of  little  interest. 
At  Bologna  he  was  captivated  by  Raphael,  and  being 
just  then  occupied  with  the  '  sweet  burden  '  of  '  Iphi- 
genie,'  which  he  was  going  to  put  into  blank  verse,  he 
resolved  that  his  heroine  should  say  nothing  that  might 
not  be  spoken  by  Raphael's  Saint  Agatha.  His  notes 
at  Bologna  contain  strong  expressions  of  disgust  with 
the  ghastly  and  gruesome  subjects  affected  by  the  early 
masters — always  malefactors,  ecstatics,  criminals,  or 
fools.  '  Always  a  suffering  hero,  never  an  action,  never 
a  present  interest,  nothing  to  suggest  a  human  idea.'  In 
Florence  he  tarried  but  three  hours,  such  was  his  feverish 
desire  to  reach  the  Eternal  City.  At  Assisi  he  eagerly 
climbed  up  to  the  little  antique  temple  of  Minerva,  but 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  85 

carefully  avoided  the  churches  of  Saint  Francis.  He 
had  lately  been  traveling  with  a  particularly  benighted 
priest  and  did  not  wish  to  encounter  more  of  the  same 
sort. 

At  last,  late  in  October,  he  reached  Rome,  the  *  city  of 
the  soul.'  If  ever  Byron's  phrase  expressed  the  exact 
truth  it  was  in  the  case  of  Goethe.  His  early  letters  tell 
of  a  joy  that  is  at  times  almost  religious;  of  a  desire 
that  he  had  cherished  for  years,  until  it  had  become  an 
'irresistible  need';  of  a  veritable  sickness  that  had  kept 
him  from  even  looking  at  a  picture  of  an  Italian  scene. 
And  now  the  impetuous  longing  was  satisfied — quieted 
for  life,  he  opined.  After  twelve  days  he  wrote  that 
he  was  *  extremely  happy.'    The  note  continues : 

Every  day  some  new  and  remarkable  object  of  interest,  every 
day  fresh,  great,  and  rare  pictures,  and  a  totality  that  I  have 
long  thought  of  and  dreamed  of  but  without  attaining  to  the 
reality  in  my  imagination. 

The  circumstances  were  highly  propitious.  He  took 
up  his  abode  with  Tischbein,  the  gifted  artist  who  later 
painted  him  reclining  amid  the  ruins  of  Rome  and  medi- 
tating on  the  flight  of  the  ages.  Very  soon  he  came  to 
know  Angelica  Kaufmann,  to  whom  we  owe  another 
famous  portrait,  a  little  less  austere  than  Tischbein's. 
Then  there  was  Heinrich  Meyer,  a  Swiss  artist  of  no 
great  genius  with  the  brush  but  an  amiable  soul  and  an 
expert  in  the  history  of  art.  Goethe  liked  him  so  well 
that  he  afterwards  called  him  to  Weimar  and  made  of 
him  a  collaborator  in  matters  of  art.  Still  other  German 
artists  then  wintering  in  Rome  were  Lips  and  Bury  and 
the  sculptor  Trippel,  who  made  the  much-copied  Apollo- 


86  GOETHE 

bust  of  Goethe.  The  artist-folk  soon  knew  who  the  man 
was  who  called  himself  Herr  Moller,  but  they  respected 
his  incognito.  Thus  he  was  the  better  able  to  share  in 
their  free-and-easy  life  without  being  troubled  by  lion- 
hunters. 

In  the  morning  he  worked  on  '  Iphigenie  * ;  in  the  after- 
noon, with  Tischbein  as  a  guide  and  mentor,  he  inspected 
the  pictures,  buildings,  and  monuments  of  the  '  lone 
mother  of  dead  empires.'  The  evenings  generally  went 
to  social  converse  or  to  reading  history.  Gradually  the 
difficult  Roman  labyrinth  cleared  up  for  him.  He  ac- 
quired sureness  of  judgment,  buoyancy  of  mind,  and 
knew  that  he  was  being  re-born.  '  Albeit  I  am  still  the 
same,*  he  wrote  on  the  2nd  of  December  to  the  friends 
at  home,  '  I  feel  that  I  am  changed  to  the  very  marrow 
of  my  bones.* 

It  is  now  time  to  pause  a  moment  over  the  new  *  Iphi- 
genie,' which  was  at  last  completed  in  January,  1787, 
after  having  caused  its  author  so  much  toil  that  he  called 
it  a  *  child  of  pain.'  The  work  done  at  this  time  con- 
cerned only  the  metrical  form  and  the  style ;  for  the  plot, 
the  architecture,  the  idea,  and  the  characters  underwent 
no  change.  Up  to  this  time  Goethe  had  hardly  done 
more  than  to  try  his  hand  at  blank  verse,  and  the  difficulty 
that  he  encountered  was  only  that  which  usually  besets 
the  unrimed  pentameter — the  danger  of  falling  into 
triviality  of  expression  or  monotony  of  cadence.  In  his 
struggle  with  the  meter  he  had  at  Rome  the  assistance  of 
Moritz,  author  of  the  novel  '  Anton  Reiser,'  who  was 
something  of  an  expert  in  prosody.  The  final  result  of 
all  the  labor  was  a  euphonious,  smoothly-flowing  verse 
such  as  captivates  the  ear  but  lacks  dramatic  vigor  and 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  87 

swiftness.  It  is  a  verse  admirably  adapted  to  a  poetic 
drama  of  the  inner  life. 

*  Iphigenie '  is  anything  but  a  Greek  play  in  the  Ger- 
man language.  The  frame  is  borrowed  from  Euripides, 
but  the  picture  is  not  Greek.  Nor  was  it  ever  meant  to 
be.  One  must  never  forget  that  Goethe  did  not  belong 
to  the  order  of  imitators.  In  the  making  of  '  Iphigenie  * 
it  was  the  very  heart  of  his  purpose  to  get  rid  of  all  the 
grossness,  the  savagery,  the  supernaturalism,  that  infect 
the  old  Greek  story,  and  to  make  his  characters  act  from 
motives  of  refined  humanity.  A  Greek  of  the  Periclean 
age  would  hardly  have  understood  the  play  at  all.  In 
its  fewness  of  characters,  its  simplicity  of  structure,  its 
unvarying  dignity  of  expression,  it  approaches  the  classic 
French  type,  but  it  differs  from  that  by  its  greater  soul- 
fulness,  its  greater  delicacy  of  psychological  analysis. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  can  not  say  that  the  personages 
are  Germans  of  the  eighteenth  century.  They  are  of  no 
time  and  place.  They  bear  somewhat  the  same  relation 
to  the  actualities  of  human  nature  that  the  Belvedere 
Apollo  or  the  Venus  of  Milo  bears  to  the  actual  human 
form.  They  are  ideal  conceptions,  yet  their  ideality  is 
nothing  ethereal  or  superhuman;  it  is  only  human  nature 
at  its  best.  In  Pylades  alone  there  is  something  left  of 
the  old  Greek  shiftiness. 

The  heroine,  in  particular,  while  she  really  does  say 
nothing  that  might  not  conceivably  be  spoken  by  a  saint 
of  Raphael,  does  not  give  the  impression  of  a  saint  or  an 
angel.  She  is  always  very  human — just  a  good  woman, 
capable  of  passion,  but  refined  by  suffering  until  her 
whole  nature  radiates  peace.  In  the  aura  of  purity  and 
sweet  reasonableness  that  invests  her,  carnal  passion  is 


88  GOETHE 

subdued,  hallucinations  take  their  flight,  the  sick  soul 
recovers  its  health  and  poise.  By  the  sheer  winsomeness 
of  her  womanhood,  by  the  artless  art  of  just  telling  the 
truth  because  she  can  not  bear  to  stain  her  soul  with  a 
lie,  she  so  works  on  the  barbarian  king  Thoas,  who  would 
fain  have  her  for  a  wife,  that  he  gives  her  up  and  lets 
her  go  in  peace.  According  to  conventional  standards 
this  is  not  a  highly  dramatic  ending;  and  yet  why  should 
a  crisis  of  the  soul,  an  act  of  splendid  self-conquest,  be 
less  effective  on  the  stage  for  civilized  folk  than  some 
counterfeit  presentment  of  bloodshed  ?  '  Iphigenie '  is 
a  noble  poem  for  the  reader  and  when  well  presented  a 
fascinating  stage-play.  But  the  title  role  calls  for  an 
actress  of  rare  gifts,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
German  public  learned  but  slowly  to  enjoy  and  to  value 
this  phase  of  Goethe's  dramatic  art. 

He  remained  in  Rome  until  February  22,  1787,  and 
then  set  out  for  Naples.  He  had  been  waiting  eagerly 
for  the  verdict  of  the  friends  at  home  with  regard  to 
the  new  '  Iphigenie.'  When  it  came  it  seemed  to  him 
rather  cool;  they  knew  and  liked  the  earlier  rhythmic 
prose,  but  could  not  at  once  adjust  their  minds  to  the 
novel  form.  It  was  now  patent  to  him  that  *  no  one 
would  thank  him  for  his  infinite  trouble.'  Nevertheless 
he  resolved  to  subject  '  Tasso '  to  the  same  operation. 
'  I  should  prefer,'  he  wrote,  '  to  throw  it  into  the  fire, 
but  I  will  abide  by  my  determination;  and  since  it  must 
be  so  we  will  make  a  curious  work  of  it.' 

A  delightful  month  in  Naples,  with  repeated  climbings 
of  Vesuvius,  was  followed  by  a  six  weeks'  tour  in  Sicily. 
On  the  tedious  four  days'  voyage  over  to  Palermo  he  lay 
in  his  cabin  sea-sick  and  pondered  the  plan  of  '  Tasso.' 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  89 

In  Sicily,  however,  he  took  to  reading  the  Odyssey,  and 
this  suggested  a  new  tragedy  to  be  called  '  Nausicaa,' 
which  soon  absorbed  all  his  literary  thoughts.  An  inter- 
esting sketch  of  the  project  is  given  from  memory  in  the 
'  Italian  Journey,'  but  the  play  was  never  written. 

Early  in  June  he  was  back  in  Rome  with  a  fresh  store 
of  inspiring  memories.  At  this  time  it  was  his  plan  to 
stay  a  few  weeks  longer  in  Rome  and  then,  before  return- 
ing to  his  official  bonds,  to  visit  his  mother  in  Frankfort 
and  remain  there  long  enough  for  the  completion  of  the 
remaining  volumes  promised  to  Goschen.  For  this  pur- 
pose, however,  Rome  was  as  good  as  Frankfort,  and 
who  could  tell  how  long  a  time  might  prove  necessary? 
On  receiving  a  letter  which  graciously  extended  his  leave 
of  absence  he  readily  decided  to  remain  another  winter 
in  Italy.  He  felt  the  need  of  practice  in  drawing  and 
painting,  to  the  end  that  he  might  no  longer  be  compelled 
to  '  creep  and  crawl  with  his  bit  of  talent,'  but  might  be 
able  to  '  move  freely,  were  it  only  as  an  amateur.'  The 
passion  of  the  painter  was  still  strong  within  him,  and 
it  was  pleasanter  to  occupy  hand  and  eye  with  living 
objects  than  to  labor  over  old  literary  projects  from 
which  he  had  become  more  or  less  estranged  in  spirit. 
From  many  a  passage  in  his  letters  it  is  clear  that  he 
often  groaned  under  the  necessity  of  settling  his  account 
with  the  past  at  a  time  when  the  present  was  so  very 
alluring.  But  something  had  to  be  done  with  the  unfin- 
ished works. 

He  first  took  up  '  Egmont,'  which  he  had  worked  on 
intermittently  between  1778  and  1782.  It  is  probable 
that  the  manuscript  which  he  took  with  him  to  Italy  was 
virtually  complete  so  far  as  the  substance  of  the  play  is 


90  GOETHE 

concerned.  The  work  to  be  done  consisted  not  in  the 
addition  of  new  matter,  but  in  a  general  revision  of  the 
style  and  language  in  accordance  with  his  new  ideas  of 
classicity.  Altho  some  of  the  scenes  had  been  written 
in  rhythmic  prose  with  a  distinct  iambic  cadence  he  seems 
never  to  have  entertained  the  idea  of  transcribing  the 
whole  into  blank  verse  as  he  had  done  in  the  case  of 

*  Iphigenie/  The  work  of  revision  was  completed  in 
July   and   August,    and   early   in    September   the   new 

*  Egmont '  was  dispatched  to  the  waiting  critics  in  Wei- 
mar. It  was  published  by  Goschen  the  following  year 
in  the  fifth  volume  of  the  new  works. 

Essentially,  then,  '  Egmont '  is  a  work  of  Goethe's 
youth,  tho  its  profound  discussions  of  statecraft  reflect 
later  experience.  It  resembles  '  Gotz  von  Berlichingen  ' 
in  having  a  hero  who  dies  as  a  martyr  to  liberty,  but 
there  is  no  attempt,  as  there  is  in  '  Gotz,'  to  show  the 
entire  form  and  pressure  of  an  epoch.  In  '  Egmont ' 
there  is  much  less  variety  and  hardly  any  action  at  all. 
We  may  speak  of  a  clash  of  wills  and  opinions,  but  it 
does  not  find  expression  in  deeds.  Egmont  himself  does 
nothing  and  we  are  obliged  to  take  his  greatness  mainly 
on  hearsay.  There  is  little  about  him  to  suggest  the 
victor  of  St.  Quentin  and  Gravelines.  One  does  not  quite 
see  why  the  populace  should  love  him  so.  Goethe  evi- 
dently expects  us  to  see  his  hero  with  the  eyes  of  Clarchen. 
We  can  understand  the  impatience  of  Schiller,  who  liked 
heroism  of  the  Plutarchian  order,  over  such  an  unac- 
countable hero. 

Nevertheless  the  character  of  Egmont  as  subtly  por- 
trayed by  Goethe  is  in  its  way  an  admirable  creation. 
The  tragic  fate  of  the  historical  Egmont  was  due  to  his 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  91 

remaining  in  Brussels  in  the  face  of  danger  which  every- 
one could  see  except  himself  and  in  spite  of  earnest 
warnings  by  the  Prince  of  Orange.  His  conscience  was 
void  of  treason  and  he  trusted  in  the  justice  of  the 
Spanish  king  whom  he  had  served  so  well.  Thus  in  view 
of  the  appalling  fate  that  overtook  him  there  really  was 
an  element  of  fatuous  blindness  in  his  conduct.  This 
became  for  Goethe  the  starting-point  for  the  conception 
of  a  *  demonic  '  nature  constitutionally  averse  to  all  sober 
thought  and  anxious  concern.  Thus  Egmont's  death 
does  not  appear  to  result  from  any  isolated  error  of  judg- 
ment, but  from  the  very  nature  of  the  man.  In  literal 
truth  his  character  is  his  fate.  His  character  is  that  of 
a  youthful  favorite  of  fortune  who  loves  pleasure,  gayety, 
and  popularity,  lives  in  and  for  the  moment,  brushes 
aside  all  serious  problems,  and  will  not  take  thought  for 
the  morrow.  His  light-heartedness  becomes  his  tragic 
guilt.  That  this  was  not  the  real  Egmont  Goethe  was 
fully  aware.  He  was  not  concerned  with  historical  truth 
but  with  a  conception  of  his  own;  hence  he  did  not 
scruple  to  discard  Egmont's  wife  and  eleven  children  and 
to  make  him  a  young  cavalier  in  love,  like  Faust,  with  a 
maid  of  low  degree. 

Next  in  order  after  *  Egmont '  came  *  Erwin  and 
Elmire '  and  *  Claudine  von  Villa  Bella,'  both  of  which 
were  radically  rewritten  in  the  course  of  the  winter.  The 
idea  was  to  give  them  a  classical  form  which  would  serve 
as  an  appropriate  setting  for  the  music  of  friend  Kayser, 
a  Swiss  composer  whom  Goethe  had  now  taken  into  his 
house  and  in  whose  talent  he  had  a  confidence  which 
the  event  failed  to  justify.  Regarded  as  literature  these 
two  musical  dramas  are  at  best  only  trifles  which  were 


92  GOETHE 

hardly  worth  the  pains  bestowed  on  their  revision.  The 
problem  of  a  Singspiel  wherein  text  and  music,  each 
worth  while  for  its  own  sake,  should  conspire  to  a  har- 
monious effect  was  no  doubt  a  pretty  and  a  worthy 
problem:  but  it  was  not  to  be  solved  by  a  mediocre 
musician  working  in  partnership  with  a  great  poet  tem- 
porarily uninspired. 

More  difficult  by  far  was  the  problem  presented  by 
'  Faust.'  In  view  of  the  many  years  that  afterwards 
went  to  its  completion  it  seems  almost  incredible  that 
its  author  should  have  dreamed,  in  the  spring  of  1788, 
of  rushing  it  to  an  end  in  a  few  weeks.  But  so  it  was. 
He  took  out  the  old  manuscript  and  found  that  he  had 
lost  the  thread  of  the  story.  The  early  scenes  appeared 
to  have  been  written  '  as  it  were  without  a  plan.'  But 
he  soon  evolved  a  plan  that  satisfied  him  for  the  moment 
and  then  proceeded  to  write  the  scene  '  Witch's  Kitchen,' 
wherein  Faust  is  given  a  diabolical  love-potion.  The 
purpose  is  clear;  it  was  to  account  after  a  fashion  for 
Faust's  sudden  descent  from  brooding  philosopher  to 
rakish  libertine.  On  finishing  the  scene  Goethe  felicitated 
himself  that  if  he  should  smoke  the  paper  no  one  would 
be  able  to  distinguish  the  new  matter  from  the  old.  But 
this  was  an  illusion.  The  '  Witch's  Kitchen '  contains 
elements  of  veiled  satire  and  fantastic  nonsense  such  as 
are  quite  alien  to  the  earlier  scenes. 

It  was  evidently  a  part  of  the  plan  to  present  Faust 
as  a  fundamentally  right-minded  man  temporarily 
blinded  by  passion  and  so  led  into  revolting  conduct  over 
which,  somehow  or  other,  a  mantle  of  charity  was  to 
be  thrown.  From  this  time  on  his  character  was  to 
appear  in  a  nobler  light  and  to  partake  of  the  spiritual 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  93 

growth  of  his  creator.  In  the  fine  soHloquy  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  scene  '  Forest  and  Cavern,'  which  also  seems 
to  have  been  written  in  Italy,  the  pensive  evolutionist  and 
grateful  lover  of  nature  is  very  evidently  Goethe  himself. 

But  the  time  was  not  yet  ripe  for  the  completion  of 
*  Faust,'  and  the  idea  was  soon  postponed  to  a  more  con- 
venient season.  A  similar  fortune  befel  '  Tasso,'  which 
at  this  time  made  little  progress  beyond  preparatory 
studies  in  Serassi's  life  of  the  unfortunate  poet.  Having 
decided  to  leave  Rome  soon  after  Easter,  Goethe  was 
the  more  eager  to  make  the  most  of  his  sojourn  while 
it  lasted.  He  took  a  keen  interest  in  the  Roman  carnival 
and  wrote  a  classic  description  of  it  which  soon  after 
appeared  in  Wieland's  Merkur.  But  it  was  not  the 
carnival,  nor  yet  the  ever-insistent  art-galleries,  that  led 
him  to  write,  under  date  of  March  14,  1788,  that  the 
last  eight  weeks  had  been  the  happiest  of  his  life.  It 
was  the  recovery  of  his  mental  buoyancy,  of  his  joy  in 
life,  of  confidence  in  his  poetic  calling.  For  by  this  time 
Rome  had  taught  him  that  he  must  renounce  the  ambition 
of  becoming  a  painter.  He  felt  now  that  he  was  born 
for  poetry  and  looked  forward  to  ten  years  of  busy 
poetic  creation.  It  gave  him  joy  to  find  that  the  fire  of 
youth  was  not  yet  extinct.  And  as  if  to  complete  the 
proof  of  his  rejuvenation  he  had  fallen  mildly  in  love 
with  a  fair  signora  from  Milan.  Her  name  was  Madda- 
lena  Riggi.  It  taxed  his  philosophy  when  he  learned  that 
she  was  already  betrothed. 

In  the  latter  part  of  April,  having  paid  a  final  visit  to 
all  the  well-beloved  places,  he  sadly  took  leave  of  Rome, 
recalling  with  sympathy  the  plaint  of  the  banished  Ovid. 
He  lingered  a  few  days  in  Florence,  somewhat  longer  in 


94  GOETHE 

Milan.  The  *  fastidious  Roman,'  as  he  now  called  him- 
self, could  see  little  to  admire  in  the  Milan  cathedral,  but 
was  deeply  impressed  by  Leonardo's  *  Last  Supper.' 

On  the  1 8th  of  June  he  was  back  in  Weimar,  but  not 
again  to  put  on  the  harness  of  an  official  drudge.  It 
had  been  agreed  that  he  should  continue  nominally  in 
the  service  of  the  state,  retaining  control  of  certain  mat- 
ters that  came  within  the  range  of  his  special  interest, 
but  that  he  was  to  be  relieved  of  his  more  exacting 
official  duties.  It  was  his  purpose  from  now  on  to  live 
for  letters  and  for  science. 

But  it  was  not  so  easy  to  keep  at  white  heat  the  poetic 
fervor  that  had  lately  possessed  him.  From  his  Frank- 
fort days,  notwithstanding  his  own  popular  triumphs, 
he  had  felt  a  certain  contempt  for  the  general  public, 
and  this  feeling  was  now  stronger  than  ever.  It  was 
his  fixed  habit  to  write  for  the  few  intimates  who  would 
understand  him;  and  now  the  old  friends  understood 
him  no  longer.  No  one  was  enthusiastic  over  '  Iphi- 
genie,'  and  even  the  loyal  Karl  August  was  dissatisfied 
with  *  Egmont.'  Herder  and  the  dowager  duchess  were 
now  in  Italy,  and  the  once  all-sufficient  Charlotte  von 
Stein  was  growing  old  and  a  little  too  strenuous  in  her 
craving  for  an  exclusive  devotion.  What  wonder  if 
Weimar  seemed  dull  and  parochial?  What  wonder  too 
if  science — searching  into  the  constant  ways  of  nature — 
proved  a  stronger  lure,  during  the  next  few  years,  than 
the  new  poetry  which  no  one  seemed  to  care  for? 

In  July,  1788,  Goethe  made  the  acquaintance  of  Chris- 
tiane  Vulpius,  who  presently  became  his  unwedded  wife. 
She  was  twenty-three  years  old,  fairly  endowed  with 
physical  charms,  winsome  in  her  ways,  and  capable  of 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  95 

self-effacing  devotion.  Goethe's  poetic  version  of  the 
affair  was  that  while  walking  aimlessly  in  the  wood  he 
had  found  a  wild-flower  which  pleased  him  so  much  that 
he  dug  it  up  and  transplanted  it  to  his  garden,  where  it 
continued  to  bloom  to  his  great  delight.  He  and  Chris- 
tiane  seem  to  have  been  very  happy  in  their  quiet  domes- 
ticity, tho  of  course  Mamsell  Vulpius  could  not  be 
admitted  to  aristocratic  society.  Henceforth  the  roomy 
house  on  the  Frauenplan — now  the  Goethe  National 
Museum — had  its  private  altar-fire  of  conjugal  love. 
The  character  of  Christiane  has  been  the  subject  of  much 
ungracious  animadversion.  On  this  subject  a  judicious 
modern  will  attach  great  importance  to  the  testimony  of 
Goethe's  mother,  who  wrote  of  Christiane,  after  she  had 
come  to  know  her  well :  *  Such  a  dear,  splendid,  un- 
spoiled creature  of  God  is  seldom  found.' 

That  the  lord  of  the  mansion  chose  to  dispense  for 
the  time  being  with  a  marriage  ceremony  was  due  no 
doubt — he  never  expressed  himself  explicitly  on  the  sub- 
ject— to  his  dislike  of  sacerdotal  forms  and  pretensions. 
In  recent  years  this  feeling  had  grown  with  his  growth. 
He  had  now  completely  broken  with  the  over-pious 
Lavater,  whom  he  had  once  admired  beyond  measure. 
His  letters  from  Italy  contain  many  hostile  comments  on, 
the  sacerdotalism  of  the  Catholic  Church.  Nature  was 
now  his  guide,  and  the  mating  of  man  and  woman  prob- 
ably seemed  to  him  a  natural  process  that  could  gain 
nothing  in  binding  qualify  from  the  blessing  of  a  priest. 
That  he  erred  in  thus  defying  the  mores  of  the  time  may 
well  be  granted,  since  he  exposed  his  wife  and  children 
to  social  obloquy.  In  time  he  saw  this  and  had  his  mar- 
riage solemnized  in  the  usual  way.    This  in  1806. 


96  GOETHE 

Of  course  the  union  with  Christiane  put  an  end  to  the 
old  unwholesome  relation  to  Charlotte  von  Stein,  and 
for  a  while  the  lady  was  very  angry  over  his  defection. 
She  could  not  comprehend  his  sudden  preference  of  a 
wife  at  the  fireside  to  a  madonna  in  the  clouds.  To  him 
also  the  rupture  was  painful  and  intensified  his  feeling 
of  alienation  from  all  that  he  had  been  before.  And  yet 
his  account  with^past  was  even  now  not  fully  settled; 
for  there  were  '  Faust '  and  '  Tasso/  with  which  some- 
thing had  to  be  done  in  view  of  the  contract  with 
Goschen. 

The  problem  of  *  Faust  *  was  quickly  solved  after  a 
fashion  by  a  decision  to  publish  it  as  a  fragment  making 
no  pretense  to  artistic  finality.  He  selected  the  portions 
with  which  he  was  fairly  satisfied,  retouched  the  style  to 
make  it  more  dignified,  versified  the  prose  of  '  Auer- 
bach's  Cellar,'  giving  to  Faust  the  role  of  a  taciturn  and 
disgusted  spectator,  and  made  some  other  minor  changes. 
No  more  new  matter  was  added,  and  the  final  scenes  of 
the  love-tragedy  were  held  back  because  the  vehement 
prose  refused  to  yield  to  the  versifying  process.  When 
pubHshed  the  'Fragment'  of  1790  attracted  but  little 
attention  from  the  literary  world.  Nor  is  this  strange, 
for  there  was  not  enough  of  it  to  foreshadow  the  plan  of 
the  whole.  It  ended  with  Gretchen's  swoon  in  the 
cathedral.  A  casual  reader  of  that  time  may  well  have 
supposed  that  the  new  '  Faust '  was  to  be  only  a  modern- 
ized version  of  the  old  tragedy  of  sin  and  damnation. 

The  problem  presented  by  '  Tasso '  was  more  difficult 
since  that  was  to  be  completed  for  better  or  worse.  At 
one  time,  as  we  have  seen,  Goethe  was  minded  to  throw 
the  manuscript  into  the  fire.    We  can  imagine  him  saying 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  97 

to  himself  in  the  exuberance  of  his  newly-restored  health 
and  spirits,  Why  should  I  torment  myself  over  the 
vagaries  of  an  unbalanced  poetic  dreamer  whose  tragedy 
was,  if  anything,  that  he  became  insane?  But  this  mood 
did  not  prevail.  Goethe  had  brooded  so  much  over  the 
subject  and  it  was  so  intimately  connected  with  his  own 
experience,  that  he  resolved  to  go  ahead  with  it  in  spite 
of  its  dramatic  nullity.  At  the  time  of  his  return  from 
Italy  not  a  single  scene  of  '  Tasso '  was  finished.  The 
play  was  his  chief  occupation  during  the  ensuing  year. 

As  finally  given  to  the  world  in  1790 — it  is  quite  use- 
less to  speculate  over  the  original  plan  of  which  there 
is  no  record  whatever — '  Tasso '  may  be  described  as  a 
tragedy  of  separation  with  the  tragic  clouds  lifted  at  the 
very  end  so  as  to  open  a  vista  of  better  things  to  come. 
Incidentally  it  is  a  very  delicate  study  of  mental  disease 
resulting  from  the  hyperesthesia  of  the  poetic  tempera- 
ment. It  was  a  theory  of  Goethe  that  the  essence  of  all 
tragedy  is  separation,  for  which,  as  he  said,  *  we  need 
neither  poison  nor  dagger,  neither  pike  nor  sword;  de- 
parture from  a  familiar  and  beloved  situation  under  more 
or  less  of  constraint  being  a  variation  of  the  same  theme.' 
In  accordance  with  this  idea  the  whole  play  is  constructed 
so  as  to  lead  up  to  the  poet's  enforced  departure  from  his 
beloved  Ferrara.  This  is  the  tragic  catastrophe.  To 
quote  Goethe's  own  words :  '  The  painful  emotion  of  a 
passionate  soul  drawn  on  irresistibly  to  an  irrevocable 
banishment  permeates  the  entire  dram-a.' 

But  for  the  reader  or  spectator  of  the  play  this  emo- 
tion is  not  at  all  the  heart  of  the  matter.  How  could  it 
be  in  a  world  where  men  are  continually  moving  from 
one  place  to  another,  breaking  old  ties,  and  forming  new 


98  GOETHE 

ones  ?  It  is  impossible  to  see  a  terrible  fatality  in  a  poet's 
changing  his  residence  because  of  an  amorous  indis- 
cretion. It  only  seems  tragic  to  Tasso,  just  as  the  loss 
of  a  toy  may  seem  tragic  to  a  child.  And  indeed  Tasso 
is  a  child — endowed  with  poetic  genius.  If  he  is  sane, 
if  the  ominous  symptoms  are  but  the  signs  of  a  nervous 
excitability  which  is  curable  by  experience  and  self- 
discipline,  then  it  is  well  for  him  to  leave  Ferrara.  If 
he  is  not  sane,  if  his  going  away — no  matter  where — 
will  simply  involve  him  in  fresh  disasters  ending  finally 
in  the  madhouse,  then  we  should  have  a  real  tragedy  and 
a  very  appalling  one.  But  Goethe,  with  his  deep-seated 
repugnance  to  all  unalloyed  tragedy,  did  not  wish  to  hint 
at  any  such  outcome  as  that.  So  at  the  last  he  lets  Tasso, 
amid  the  seeming  wreck  of  all  his  fortunes,  clamber  up 
on  the  rock  of  Antonio's  friendship.  Thus  the  play 
ends,  so  to  speak,  with  an  interrogation  point.  Its  great 
merit  is  its  fine  portraiture  of  Tasso's  character. 
Dramatic,  in  any  ordinary  sense  of  the  word,  the  play 
can  hardly  be  called.  But  any  one  who  can  suppose  that 
it  lacks  interest  on  the  stage  has  never  seen  the  title  role 
portrayed  by  a  good  actor  in  full  sympathy  with  Goethe's 
purpose. 

In  '  Tasso  *  the  passion  of  love  appears  only  as  a  subli- 
mated affair  of  worship  and  renunciation.  There  is 
hardly  a  hint  in  it  of  that  earthly  Eros  who  had  lately 
invaded  its  author's  house  and  transformed  his  phi- 
losophy. For  that  we  must  look  to  the  '  Roman  Elegies,' 
which  he  began  to  write  in  the  fall  of  1788  and  published 
some  seven  years  later  in  Schiller's  Horen.  They  are 
ostensibly  reminiscent  of  Rome,  but  the  lady  in  the  case 
is  Christiane  Vulpius.     In  these  distichs  Goethe  thinks 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  99 

of  himself  as  a  modern  colleague  of  Catullus,  Propertius, 
and  Tibullus,  wandering  by  day  amid  the  grandeurs  of 
Rome  and  at  night  keeping  tryst  with  his  mistress.  They 
strike  a  new  note  in  German  poetry.  With  a  pagan 
frankness  which  is  refreshing  or  shocking  according  to 
the  reader's  predilection,  they  exploit  the  fooleries  of  the 
enamored  state  and  connect  them  with  the  high  matters 
of  the  intellect.     Thus: 

Happy  on  classical  soil  I  feel  a  glad  inspiration, 

Hear  with  a  quickened  sense  voices  of  Present  and  Past, 
Follow  learned  advice  and  thumb  the  lore  of  the  ancients. 

Always  with  eager  hand,  ever  with  greater  content. 
Thanks,  however,  to  Amor,  at  night  it's  a  different  story, 

Teaching  me  lessons  by  far  better  than  erudite  lore. 
For  is  it  not  instructive  etc.  .  .  . 
Thus  do  I  comprehend  the  marble;  I  measure  and  ponder, 

See  with  a  feeling  eye,  feel  with  a  hand  that  sees. 

After  his  return  from  Italy  with  the  flesh  emancipated, 
and  so  long  as  the  antique  continued  to  be  his  ruling 
passion,  the  ancient  elegiac  meter  was  in  high  favor  with 
Goethe.  He  wrote  a  vast  number  of  distichs.  And 
indeed  the  form  was  well  suited  to  the  critical  and  reflec- 
tive moods  of  a  man  for  whom  poetry  tended  to  become 
an  avocation,  science  the  main  business  of  life.  It  is 
easy  to  praise  or  blame,  to  comment  or  satirize,  in  dis- 
tichs; quite  impossible  to  sing  or  to  reach  the  heart  of 
the  many.  And  Goethe  was  now  completely  out  of  touch 
with  the  many.  Few  bought  or  read  his  latest  produc- 
tions. And  as  for  the  scientific  studies  to  which  he 
devoted  himself  with  increasing  ardor  in  his  isolation, 
he  had  for  them  not  even  the  ordinary  public  of  the 
academic  specialist.  He  was  obliged  to  tread  the  wine- 
press alone. 


100  GOETHE 

Groping  toward  a  tenable  theory  of  organic  evolution, 
he  continued  his  studies  in  animal  and  plant  morphology, 
published  one  or  two  short  papers,  and  wrote  a  poem 
in  distichs  to  expound  his  theory  of  plant  metamorphosis. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  he  took  up  optics,  with  special 
reference  to  the  theory  of  color,  on  which  he  ultimately 
published  a  bulky  treatise.  His  great  concern  was  to 
refute  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  theory  of  the  composition  of 
white  light.  It  annoyed  him  to  see  what  he  could  not 
but  regard  as  a  pernicious  error  generally  accepted  by 
the  learned  on  the  authority  of  a  great  name.  Gradually 
he  came  to  feel  that  his  own  great  mission  in  life  was  to 
set  the  world  right  on  the  subject  of  color  and  to  show 
up  Newton  as  the  father  of  a  false  doctrine. 

In  the  spring  of  1790  he  paid  a  second  visit  to  Venice, 
but  now  the  old  charm  was  gone.  Where  he  had  before 
seen  picturesque  novelty  he  now  saw  squalor,  selfishness, 
and  folly.    Was  this  the  Italy  he  had  loved? 

Erstwhile  I  had  a  Love,  and  more  than  all  else  I  loved  her ; 
Now  I  have  her  no  more.    Hush,  and  bear  with  the  loss. 

Thus  he  complains  in  one  of  the  '  Venetian  Epigrams/ 
which  teem  with  ill-humor  and  pessimistic  reflections  on 
this  and  that — the  babbling  priests,  the  selfish  ruling 
class,  above  all,  the  apostles  of  freedom.  For  by  this 
time  the  Revolution  was  well  under  way  in  Paris  and 
there  was  excitement  everywhere  over  the  ideas  of  1789. 
Goethe  did  not  like  them.  He  concluded  that  the  demo- 
cratic agitators  were  either  dupes  or  deceivers,  the  latter 
being  mere  hypocrites  who  were  masking  selfish  designs 
behind  a  fine-sounding  lingo  of  liberty,  equality,  and 
fraternity.     He  knew  very  well — none  better — that  the 


SOJOURN  IN  ITALY  loi 

aristocrats  had  much  on  the  score  against  them,  but  he 
felt  sure  that  it  was  not  for  the  people  themselves  to  find 
a  remedy.  The  people  did  not  know  what  they  wanted 
or  what  was  good  for  them.  Help  could  come  only  from 
a  strong  man  able  to  impose  his  will  on  all. 

In  short,  the  outlook  in  the  great  world  was  just  then 
rather  lugubrious  for  a  man  of  Goethe's  temperament. 
On  his  return  in  September  he  wrote  to  the  Herders 
from  Breslau : 

If  you  will  continue  to  like  me  a  little,  if  a  few  folk  remain 
kindly  disposed,  if  my  girl  is  true,  and  my  big  stove  heats  well, 
I  have  for  the  present  nothing  more  to  wish  for. 

In  1 79 1  a  ducal  theater  was  established  at  Weimar 
and  Goethe  became  its  director — a  post  which  he  was 
destined  to  hold  for  twenty-six  years.  With  a  view  to 
providing  theatrical  wares  such  as  the  taste  of  the  time 
demanded,  and  at  the  same  time  of  hitting  off  the  seamy 
side  of  the  revolutionary  excitement,  he  wrote  two  prose 
plays,  the  '  Grand  Cophta '  and  the  *  Citizen  General' 
They  are  decidedly  his  weakest  productions  in  the 
dramatic  form — tame  as  stage-plays  and  vacuous  as 
literature.  Two  others,  '  Excited  Folk  '  and  the  *  Maid 
of  Oberkirch,'  were  left  unfinished.  In  1792  he  accom- 
panied the  Duke  of  Weimar  on  the  inglorious  invasion 
of  France  by  the  allied  Austrians  and  Prussians.  He 
heard  the  far-famed  cannonade  at  Valmy  and  was  con- 
scious that  a  new  epoch  was  dawning.  The  following 
year  he  witnessed  the  siege  of  Mainz  by  the  Prussians. 
Many  years  later  he  gave  accounts  of  these  experiences 
in  '  Campaign  in  France '  and  the  '  Siege  of  Mainz.' 

On  the  whole  it  is  a  stretch  of  lean  years  that  inter- 


102  GOETHE 

venes  between  *  Tasso  *  and  '  Wilhelm  Meister.'  So  far 
as  literature  is  concerned,  the  best  achievement  of  the 
period  is  the  entertaining  hexameter  version  of  the 
medieval  '  Reynard  the  Fox/  It  is  significant  of  his  new 
classicizing  tendency  that  he  should  have  chosen  to  dress 
up  these  old  folk-tales  in  the  stately  dactyls  and  spondees 
of  Homer — a  meter  quite  aHen  to  their  genius.  Had  he 
undertaken  to  translate  them  twenty  years  before,  we 
may  be  sure  that  he  would  have  put  them  into  the  Hans 
Sachs  verse  which  he  knew  how  to  handle  so  well.  But 
his  concern  was  no  longer  to  make  his  work  smell  of  the 
German  soil ;  he  was  bent  rather  on  following  in  the  foot- 
steps of  the  ancients. 


CHAPTER  VI 

ALLIANCE    WITH    SCHILLER 

A  CHANCE  meeting  in  the  summer  of  1794  led  to  an 
intimate  friendship  between  Goethe  and  Schiller;  a 
friendship  that  exerted  a  quickening  influence  on  both 
of  them,  drew  them  together  as  militant  allies,  and  pre- 
pared the  way  for  what  may  fairly  be  called  the  great 
decade  of  German  letters.  In  the  light  of  what  was  to 
come  it  seems  remarkable  that  they  did  not  find  each 
other  sooner.  For  six  years  Schiller  had  lived  at  Jena, 
where  Goethe  was  almost  as  much  at  home  as  in  Weimar; 
so  that  a  friendly  relation  would  have  been  easy  and 
natural  if  either  had  chosen  to  take  the  first  step.  But 
the  step  was  not  taken.  At  the  time  of  their  first  intro- 
duction to  each  other — it  was  in  the  summer  of  1788 — 
Schiller  looked  upon  Goethe  as  a  proud  son  of  fortune, 
a  sort  of  Olympian  god,  who  gave  everything  but  him- 
self, and  with  whom  a  friendship  on  equal  terms  would 
be  quite  impossible.  Goethe,  on  the  other  hand,  absorbed 
just  then  in  his  work  and  his  reminiscences  of  Italy, 
seems  to  have  known  very  little  about  Schiller,  save  that 
he  was  the  author  of  a  detestable  play,  the  '  Robbers,' 
which  had  lately  been  debauching  the  public  taste.  He 
did  not  know  how  greatly  the  author  of  the  play  had 
changed  since  writing  it.^ 

Mn  the  author's    'Life  and  Works  of  Friedrich    Schiller*   this 
subject  is  more  fully  presented  than  is  here  possible. 

X03 


I04  GOETHE 

And  so  they  went  their  separate  ways,  each  to  a  great 
degree  misconceiving  the  other.  Gradually,  however, 
the  course  of  Schiller's  development  had  brought  him 
nearer  and  nearer  to  Goethe's  way  of  thinking.  Not- 
withstanding much  difference  of  opinion,  of  genius,  and 
of  temperament,  they  now  had  a  great  deal  in  common. 
One  may  guess  that  they  would  soon  have  drawn  closer 
together  even  without  the  '  happy  event,'  as  Goethe  called 
it,  which  led  to  a  first  interchange  of  views.  They  had 
been  listening  to  a  scientific  paper  in  Jena.  As  they  left 
the  room  together  Schiller  observed  casually  that  such 
piecemeal  treatment  of  nature  as  the  paper  exemplified 
was  rather  dull  business  for  the  layman.  Goethe  replied 
that  there  were  experts  who  did  not  like  it  either,  and 
went  on  to  explain  his  own  view  of  the  matter  under 
discussion.  When  they  reached  Schiller's  house  they 
were  still  talking  earnestly  and  Goethe  went  in  to  help 
out  his  argument  by  means  of  a  drawing — presumably 
of  a  typical  flower.  '  But  that,'  said  Schiller,  '  is  not 
a  matter  of  experience;  that  is  an  idea.'  Disappointed 
and  feeling  that  all  his  labor  had  been  in  vain,  Goethe 
replied  that  he  was  glad  if  he  had  ideas  without  know- 
ing it  and  could  actually  see  them  with  his  eyes. 

To  Schiller,  now  a  well-seasoned  Kantian,  it  must  have 
seemed  strange  enough  to  hear  a  man  talk  of  seeing  an 
idea  with  his  eyes.  But  what  of  that  ?  He  had  long  been 
a  warm  admirer  of  Goethe's  poetic  gift,  radically  differ- 
ent as  it  was  from  his  own,  and  just  now  he  was  eager 
to  enlist  the  eminent  Weimarian  as  a  contributor  to 
his  new  magazine,  the  Horen.  Evidently  it  was  worth 
while  to  understand  such  a  man  and  to  show  that  one 
understood  him.      So  Schiller  penned  that  remarkable 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  105 

letter  of  August  2^^,  1794,  so  coolly  analytic  yet  subtly 
flattering,  which  opened  the  way  for  further  correspond- 
ence. It  was  an  easy  conquest,  for  Goethe  was  beginning 
to  feel  his  isolation  and  to  desire  a  wider  range  of  influ- 
ence. He  replied  very  graciously,  promising  active  co- 
operation on  the  Horen,  and  from  that  time  the  two  men 
were  the  best  of  friends.  So  long  as  Schiller  lived  noth- 
ing occurred  to  cloud  their  relation. 

The  new  magazine  had  been  planned  as  a  high-class 
journal  of  art  and  letters.  The  project  had  been  well 
advertised,  the  enterprising  Cotta  was  ready  with  the 
modest  capital  required,  and  a  goodly  number  of  the 
best  writers  in  Germany  had  promised  to  contribute. 
The  auspices  seemed  highly  favorable,  the  more  so  as 
Schiller  had  had  some  ten  years'  experience  in  editing 
a  literary  journal.  It  was  his  purpose  to  avoid  politics, 
for  he  had  reached  the  solemn  conviction  that  the  press- 
ing need  of  the  age  was  esthetic  culture.  That  and  that 
only,  he  believed,  could  mediate  effectively  between  the 
rational  and  the  sensual  side  of  human  nature  and  make 
man  truly  human.  The  fierce  excitement  caused  by  the 
Revolution  struck  him  as  discreditable  to  mankind  and 
ominous  for  the  future.  Hence  his  Utopian  dream  of 
a  magazine  which  should  divert  the  minds  of  its  readers 
from  the  excitements  which  were  making  life  ugly,  into 
the  serene  fields  of  art,  which  alone  could  make  it  beau- 
tiful. 

But  the  fine  hopes  of  the  editor  were  quickly  blighted. 
When  the  journal  began  to  appear,  in  1795,  it  was  found 
to  be  singularly  uninteresting.  In  a  short  time  Cotta's 
woful  tale  of  canceled  subscriptions  began  to  foretell 
an  early  death.    After  three  years  of  troubled  existence 


io6  GOETHE 

the  Horen  came  to  an  untimely  end  and  there  were  few 
mourners. 

The  failure,  such  as  it  was, — for  after  all  a  consid- 
►  erable  quantity  of  prose  and  verse  that  is  now  classical 
was  first  published  in  the  Horen, — was  not  due  entirely 
to  Schiller's  misreading  of  the  public  temper.  The  ex- 
pected contributions  did  not  come  to  hand ;  he  was  obliged 
to  take  what  he  could  get,  and  what  he  could  get  was 
for  the  most  part  hard  reading  for  the  general  public. 
As  for  Goethe,  he  loyally  supported  the  enterprise,  but 
his  contributions  were  anything  but  a  source  of  popular 
strength.  The  '  Roman  Elegies '  offended  many,  and 
not  alone  the  very  prudish,  by  their  pagan  eroticism. 
Goethe  was  not  yet  great  enough  so  that  readers  were 
minded  to  take  his  indecencies  as  we  take  those  of  Shak- 
spere  or  the  bible.  The  tone  and  form  of  the  ^  Elegies ' 
were  new  in  German  literature,  while  the  subject-matter 
made  no  very  strong  appeal  even  to  the  aristocracy  of 
letters. 

Hardly  less  caviar  to  the  general  were  the  '  Letters 
from  Switzerland '  and  the  autobiography  of  Benvenuto 
Cellini.  In  the  former  Goethe  undertook  to  describe  his 
tour  of  1779,  but  they  are  mainly  taken  up  with  dry 
scientific  observations  rather  than  with  the  impressions 
of  a  poet  in  a  land  of  beauty.  The  autobiography  of 
Cellini — goldsmith,  sculptor,  soldier  of  fortune,  esthetic 
reprobate — interested  Goethe  as  a  remarkable  picture  of 
Italian  life  in  the  sixteenth  century.  To  the  student  of 
that  era  it  is  indeed  a  fascinating  book,  since  it  takes 
us  behind  the  scenes  of  the  Renaissance  and  shows  us 
what  the  glamor  is  made  of.  And  the  character  of 
Cellini — what    a    curious    mixture    of    artistic    feeling, 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  107 

energy,  enterprise,  bravery,  love  of  kindred,  with  nearly 
all  the  faults  that  flesh  is  heir  to!  Withal  the  transla- 
tion is  excellent.  But  the  similarity  of  detail  soon  grows 
a  little  monotonous,  and  the  critical  reader  of  the  Horen 
who  had  paid  his  money  in  the  expectation  of  high-class 
literary  novelties  may  well  have  felt  a  little  impatient 
that  so  much  space  was  devoted  to  a  translation  of  an 
old  book  about  an  Italian  artisan  of  minor  importance. 

More  appetizing  for  the  public  of  that  day  were  the 
'  Diversions  of  German  Exiles,*  a  collection  of  stories 
that  accorded  well  with  Schiller's  idea  of  using  art  as 
an  antidote  to  politics.  The  fiction  is  that  a  widowed 
baroness  has  fled  before  the  revolutionists  from  her  estate 
on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine,  and  after  much  painful 
experience  has  settled  temporarily  just  across  the  river. 
Here  she  gathers  various  old  friends  about  her,  but  the 
domestic  calm  is  soon  disturbed  by  political  discussion. 
A  radical  nephew  who  believes  in  the  Revolution  clashes 
with  an  elderly  conservative — with  the  result  that  the 
old  gentleman  leaves  the  place  in  a  huff.  This  greatly 
grieves  the  baroness  because  the  man's  wife  is  her  dearest 
friend.  So  she  reads  the  culprits  a  lecture  on  the  sin 
of  allowing  poHtical  bitterness  to  invade  the  peace  of 
a  household  and  make  an  end  of  all  pleasant  social  con- 
verse. Finally  they  all  agree  to  ban  politics  and  try  to 
amuse  one  another  by  telling  stories. 

The  stories  told  are  mostly  pretty  poor  stuff.  Nearly 
all  are  old  tales  refurbished — tales  of  strange  happenings 
that  are  not  explained  and  leave  the  reader  in  a  puzzle. 
For  highly  entertaining  yarns  they  lack  movement.  One 
of  them,  the  famous  Mdrchen,  with  its  artificial  fancies, 
its  cryptic  style,  and  its  baffling  symbolism,  has  tried  the 


io8  GOETHE 

patience  and  the  guessing  powers  of  many.  Some  have 
pronounced  it  very  fine;  but  at  best  its  alleged  wisdom, 
when  disengaged  from  its  symbolic  wrappings  and  duly 
explained  by  those  who  have  a  talent  for  that  sort  of 
thing,  does  not  appear  to  be  remarkably  precious.  At 
any  rate,  the  true  German  Mdrchen  is  made  of  no  such 
material. 

The  best  of  the  *  Diversions  '  is  a  story  of  renuncia- 
tion— a  theme  which  was  just  now  striking  root  in 
Goethe's  mind.  We  are  told  of  a  rich  merchant  who 
leaves  his  pampered  young  wife  for  a  long  absence, 
merely  enjoining  upon  her  that,  if  she  must  have  a  lover 
while  he  is  away,  she  shall  at  least  choose  a  man  of  solid 
character.  She  assures  him  solemnly  that  she  is  for  him 
alone — nothing  could  shake  her  allegiance.  But  after 
a  while  idleness  and  boredom  have  their  natural  effect; 
she  begins  to  entertain  lawless  thoughts  and  ends  by 
offering  herself  to  an  esteemed  young  lawyer  who  has 
attracted  her  attention.  He  professes  to  be  overjoyed 
but  informs  her  that  he  is  temporarily  under  certain  reli- 
gious vows.  A  considerable  time  must  elapse  before  he 
can  gratify  her,  but  she  herself  can  shorten  the  interval 
by  taking  upon  herself  one-half  of  his  penance.  She 
consents  reluctantly  and  the  fasting  to  which  she  subjects 
herself  establishes  a  habit  of  renunciation  which  in  the 
end  saves  her  wifely  virtue. 

It  was  mainly  the  indifferent  success  of  the  Horen 
which  led  Goethe  and  Schiller  to  retaliate  in  the  '  Xenia.' 
The  public,  at  least  certain  elements  of  it,  seemed  to 
need  chastizing  for  its  stupidity  and  wrong-headedness. 
So  they  began  to  write  satirical  distichs  at  the  expense 
of  those  persons  whose  opinions  or  conduct  offered  a 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  109 

target.  At  first  there  was  no  intention  to  publish  the 
gibes;  it  was  an  escapade  in  which  they  indulged  for 
their  private  amusement.  Sometimes  one  would  pro- 
pound the  theme  and  the  other  write  the  verses;  again 
one  would  do  the  hexameter,  the  other  the  pentameter; 
but  most  often,  of  course,  any  given  distich  is  entirely 
the  work  of  the  one  or  the  other.  In  the  course  of  a 
few  months  they  had  made  nearly  a  thousand  of  the 
distichs  to  which,  following  the  example  of  Martial, 
they  gave  the  name  of  *  Xenia,'  or  gifts  of  hospitality. 
Having  undertaken  to  edit  a  Musenalmanach,  for  which 
verses  would  be  needed,  Schiller  decided  to  include  a 
collection  of  *  Xenia '  in  the  volume  for  1797.  About 
one-half  the  number  in  existence  were  published  at  that 
time,^  and  great  was  the  commotion  they  caused.  Some 
of  those  hit  lost  their  temper  and  replied  with  vulgar 
abuse.  There  was  a  shower  of  indignant  screeds  and 
of  '  Anti-Xenia,'  and  it  was  two  or  three  years  before 
the  storm  fully  subsided. 

The  '  Xenia,'  then,  were  an  affair  of  literary  partner- 
ship. There  is  no  way  of  disengaging  Goethe's  part  in 
them  except  by  the  knowledge  one  may  have  of  his  style, 
opinions,  hobbies,  and  modes  of  thought.  The  two  poets 
agreed  that  neither  should  ever  claim  separate  property 
in  them,  and  it  is  just  as  well  to  leave  the  question  of 
authorship  where  they  left  it.  In  Goethe's  case  the 
*  Xenia '  would  have  but  small  biographic  value,  even 
if  it  were  possible  to  determine  which  ones  he  wrote; 
for  they  deal  mainly  with  his  opinions  and  prejudices, 
and  these  are  well  enough  known  from  other  sources. 

*  The  entire  manuscript  was  published  in  1893  by  the  Weimar 
Goethe  Society  under  the  editorship  of  Erich  Schmidt. 


no  GOETHE 

The  important  fact  is  that  they  became  the  occasion  of 
his  alliance  with  Schiller,  whose  strength  was  thus  added 
to  his  own.  The  great  mass  of  the  distichs,  occupied 
as  they  were  with  personal  pin-pricks  and  forgotten 
issues,  have  now  lost  their  point.  Some  of  them  were 
very  unjust,  and  a  few  were  so  carelessly  chiseled  as  to 
make  legitimate  game  for  the  metrical  purist. 

The  first  major  work  to  be  completed  by  Goethe  in 
the  period  which  dates  from  the  beginning  of  his  con- 
nection with  Schiller  was  '  Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprentice- 
ship,' published  in  1796.  Even  now  the  novel  was  not 
finished  in  an  artistic  sense,  since  a  continuation  under 
the  name  of  'Wanderings'  (Wander jahre)  was  already 
in  view.  Comparing  the  '  Apprenticeship  '  with  the  earlier 
*  Theatrical  Mission'  (see  above,  page  78),  one  sees  that 
much  work  had  been  done  on  the  new  version.  The  obvi- 
ously biographical  recollections  of  childhood  occupy  less 
space,  trivial  incidents  in  the  story  have  been  omitted 
or  compressed,  the  style  has  been  retouched,  and  con- 
siderable new  matter  has  been  added  at  the  end. 

What  is  most  important,  however,  is  that  the  original 
idea  of  the  tale,  which  was  to  describe  the  experiences 
whereby  a  poet-actor  learns  to  find  satisfaction  in  the 
more  ideal  aspects  of  his  calling,  has  given  way  to  an- 
other which  is  larger  but  less  definite  and  less  manage- 
able. The  *  Theatrical  Mission,'  which  would  have  come 
to  a  natural  end  with  the  realization  of  its  hero's  dra- 
matic ambition,  has  become  an  '  apprenticeship' — a  word 
which  at  once  suggests  a  course  of  training  for  some 
vocation  or  employment.  But  no  new  vocation  is  pre- 
sented as  the  goal  toward  which  all  things  are  tending. 
The  meaning  evidently  is  that  Wilhelm  is  learning  to  live 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  iii 

by  living.  He  is  undergoing  an  apprenticeship  to  the 
business  of  life.  But  such  a  scheme  has  no  natural 
end,  since  it  is  obviously  the  part  of  wisdom  to  keep  on 
learning  to  the  day  of  one's  death. 

Among  novels  of  first-class  fame  there  is  none  of  v^hich 
it  is  so  difficult  to  give  the  gist  in  a  few  words.  '  Wil- 
helm  Meister '  is  like  a  stroll  along  the  highway  with 
frequent  strayings  into  devious  by-paths.  There  are 
adventures  tame  and  wild.  One  meets  a  host  of  people 
whom  one  comes  to  know  well — the  most  of  them  not 
very  precious  acquaintances — and  one  hears  much  shrewd 
comment  on  things  in  general.  The  topography  is  vague, 
so  that  the  reader  seldom  knows  where  he  is.  The  move- 
ment is  very  slow,  much, attention  being  given  to  inci- 
dents and  descriptions  that  have  no  obvious  connection 
with  the  apprenticeship  idea.  For  the  sophisticated  novel- 
reader  of  today  the  book  is  dull  reading  in  parts. 

Like  the  medieval  Par^iyal,  Wilhelm  is  a  sort  of 
'  young  fool  *  who  goes'  blundering  through  life,  seek- 
ing to  gratify  his  desires  and  to  develop  his  character; 
but  no  kingship  of  the  Grail  awaits  him  at  the  last.  Nor 
is  there  any  other  culminating-point  in  his  career;  for 
his  marriage  to  the  estimable  Natalie  is  evidently  to  be 
thought  of  as  only  an  incident  in  his  apprenticeship — 
like  his  earlier  love-affair  with  the  actress  Mariane. 
Here  and  there  we  seem  to  get  a  hint  that  he  is  destined 
for  some  notable  inner  illumination,  but  this  never  really 
comes.  What  he  finally  learns  is  only  that  it  is  best 
to  have  something  useful  and  interesting  to  do,  and 
that  for  him  the  theater  is  after  all  not  the  thing.  Will 
farming  turn  out  better  after  his  return  from  his  wan- 
derings in  Italy?     Perhaps,  and  perhaps  not;  one  can 


112  GOETHE 

not  be  at  all  sure.  This  is  only  a  way  of  saying  that  the 
literary  interest  of  the  tale  does  not  turn  on  any  specific 
contribution  that  it  makes  to  the  philosophy  of  life.  Read- 
ers have  generally  been  too  prone  to  look  for  doctrine 
where  Goethe  only  meant  to  portray  life  in  certain 
phases  of  it  that  happened  to  interest  him.  There  are 
many  oracles  in  ^  Wilhelm  Meister,'  but  there  is  np  .s.Ur 
preme  oracle.  The  didacticism  of  the  book  is  precisely 
its  least  appetizing  feature  for  the  reader  of  today. 

The  literary  model  of  '  Wilhelm  Meister,'  so  far  as 
it  had  any,  was  the  English  novel  of  Fielding  and  Smol- 
lett. Wilhelm  is  a  German  Tom  Jones,  made  of  a  little 
finer  stuff  and  endowed  with  a  Goethean  bent  for  all- 
around  culture.  At  present  the  cultural  novel  has  so 
lost  prestige  that  the  majority  of  Goethe's  admirers  would 
probably  vote  '  Wilhelm  Meister '  to  be  the  least  en- 
gaging of  his  major  works.  When  the  book  was  new, 
however,  while  it  never  attained  to  real  popularity  as 
did  '  Werther,'  it  made  an  epoch  in  German  letters  by 
the  spell  it  cast  over  the  literary  class.  Schiller  studied 
it  with  enthusiasm  as  it  came  from  the  press.  The  elder 
Schlegel  reviewed  it  with  warm  appreciation;  while  the 
younger  classed  it,  along  with  Fichte's  philosophy  and 
the  French  Revolution,  as  one  of  the  three  greatest  events 
of  the  century.  He  saw  in  it  the  promise  of  a  wonder- 
ful new  '  poetry,'  which  he  at  first  called  Romanpoesie, 
or  poetry  of  the  novel,  and  then,  by  a  juggle  of  words, 
romantische  Poesie,  or  romantic  poetry.  This  poetry  was 
to  be  realistic  in  the  sense  of  dealing  with  life's  actuali- 
ties. It  was  also  to  be  universal,  as  revealing  the  whole 
mind  of  its  author,  whose  sovran  caprice  was  to  know 
no  law  of  tradition  or  convention.     It  was  to  combine 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  113 

all  the  genres  in  one,  uniting  poetry,  philosophy,  and 
science. 

Thus  the  Romanticists  were  moved  to  vie  with  Goethe 
in  the  production  of  discursive  autobiographic  novels. 
For  a  whole  generation  the  wraith  of  '  Wilhelm  Meister  ' 
haunted  the  minds  of  German  fiction-writers,  who  pro- 
ceeded to  medievalize  the  scheme.  In  general  they  found 
the  story  too  realistic,  too  garishly  modern  and  banal. 
The  modern  reader's  complaint  is  rather  that  it  is  not 
realistic  enough,  but  leans  too  much  toward  the  old 
romance  of  mysterious  adventure. 

Having  now  disposed  provisionally  of  the  novel  that 
had  been  teasing  his  mind  for  some  twenty  years  and 
reserved  the  continuation  as  a  problem  for  the  in- 
definite future,  Goethe  returned  for  a  moment  to  that 
which  the  world  now  recognizes  as  his  masterpiece.  In 
a  letter  of  November  29,  1794,  Schiller  had  urged  him 
to  go  on  with  *  Faust,'  in  which  he,  Schiller,  saw  the 

*  torso  of  a  Hercules.'  Goethe  replied  in  effect  that  he 
lacked  the  courage  for  that  undertaking.  For  the  moment 
the  new  friend's  encouragement  produced  no  effect,  yet 
it  may  well  have  formed  an  added  incentive  to  poetic 
effort.  In  the  summer  of  1797  we  find  Goethe  once  more 
occupied  with  the  *  plan '  of  '  Faust.'  In  June  of  that 
year  he  wrote  the  four  fine  stanzas  which  precede  the 
drama  under  the  title  of  '  Dedication.'  The  '  hovering 
forms '  of  the  legend  come  back  with  a  flood  of  memo- 
ries and  a  mute  appeal  for  renewed  intercourse.     But 

*  Faust '  was  soon  laid  aside  for  a  third  tour  in  Switzer- 
land. The  notes  of  this  journey  were  afterwards  badly 
edited  for  publication  by  Eckermann.  The  local  tradi- 
tions of  the  Lucerne  region  suggested  a  narrative  poem 


114  GOETHE 

on  the  William  Tell  legend,  but  this  was  not  even  begun. 
Instead,  the  theme  and  the  data  were  turned  over  to 
Schiller,  who  made  a  play  of  them. 

Having  in  mind  the  needs  of  next  year's  Musenal- 
manach,  Goethe  and  Schiller  now  turned  their  attention 
to  the  ballad.  This  led  to  an  interchange  of  views  on 
the  nature  of  the  epic,  and  of  the  ballad  as  a  short  epic 
in  lyric  form.  From  the  poetic  impulse  thus  engendered 
came  the  splendid  *  Bride  of  Corinth '  and  other  ballads. 
Out  of  this  same  soil  grew  the  project  of  a  narrative 
poem  epic  in  style,  but  without  deeds  of  high  emprize 
and  with  the  interest  focused  on  humble  middle-class 
life.  In  this  case  planning  was  quickly  followed  by  exe- 
cution. *  Hermann  and  Dorothea  '  was  published  in  1798. 
A  hard-working  youth,  living  alone  with  his  parents  and 
needing  a  wife,  woos  and  wins  a  sturdy  emigrant-girl 
who  has  been  driven  by  the  Revolution  from  her  home 
across  the  Rhine.  Such  is  the  substance  of  the  story 
which  Goethe  tells  in  nine  cantos  of  heroic  hexameter, 
with  much  embroidery  and  many  a  reminiscence  of 
Homeric  phrase — an  altogether  charming  production  of 
a  novel  kind. 

The  Gottingen  poets,  notably  Voss,  had  written  hex- 
ameter idyls  recording  the  simple  annals  of  the  poor, 
and  one  of  these,  '  Luise,'  was  greatly  admired  by  Goethe. 
He  knew  much  of  it  by  heart,  yet  he  was  far  from  imi- 
tating it.  *  Hermann  and  Dorothea '  is  no  idyl  of  love 
in  a  cottage,  but  rather  an  epic  of  the  Revolution  con- 
sidered as  affecting  the  lives  of  common  folk.  We 
get  a  picture  of  a  little  world  with  the  great  world  in 
the  background.  The  story  might  have  been  told,  and 
a  writer  of  today  would  probably  prefer  to  tell  it,  in  a 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  115 

prose  novelette;  indeed  we  can  easily  imagine  it  as  em- 
bedded among  the  '  Diversions  of  German  Exiles.'  In 
prose,  however,  it  would  have  lacked  the  peculiar  savor 
due  to  the  sonorous  antique  verse,  which  has  the  effect 
of  a  subtle  humor.  The  stately  dactyls  and  spondees, 
the  recurrent  epithets  and  descriptions,  the  Homeric  turns 
of  expression,  throw  a  certain  artificial  dignity  about  the 
personages  of  the  story  and  their  parochial  affairs,  which 
interlock  so  naturally  with  the  dreams  of  the  French 
democracy. 

It  has  been  pretty  clearly  made  out  that  the  local  color 
of  '  Hermann  and  Dorothea  *  was  suggested  mainly  by 
the  Thuringian  village  of  Possneck,  with  which  Goethe 
is  known  to  have  been  familiar.  The  landlord  and  his 
wife  owe  something  to  Councilor  Goethe  and  Frau  Aja, 
and  there  is  just  a  Httle  of  the  poet  himself  in  Hermann. 
For  the  splendid  figure  of  Dorothea,  one  of  Goethe's 
most  winsome  creations,  there  was  no  model  whose  name, 
is  known;  but  she  was  evidently  copied  from  nature  in 
the  same  sense  that  the  rest  of  the  poem  is  realistic. 
The  artistry  is  a  sort  of  transfigured  realism,  in  which 
nothing  is  quite  natural,  yet  everything  in  the  deeper 
sense  true  to  life.  All  the  banalities  of  the  situation  are 
omitted  or  toned  down,  but  the  contours  and  propor- 
tions are  left  intact  and  a  gauze  veil  of  poetry  is  thrown 
over  it  all. 

So  we  see  why  Goethe  in  his  old  age  told  Eckermann 
that  '  Hermann  and  Dorothea '  was  the  only  work  of 
his  own  that  he  could  still  read  with  unalloyed  pleasure. 
(it  was  the  product  of  happy  moods  and  of  a  single 
well-sustained  poetic  impulse,  with  no  flagging  of  the 
spirit,  no  irksome  efforts  to  recover  a  lost  thread.}  Alto- 


ii6  GOETHE 

gether  blithe  in  its  general  effect,  it  was  in  no  way  asso- 
ciated with  painful  struggle  or  with  epoch-making  inner 
change.  Goethe  had  reason  enough  for  thinking  of 
*  Faust '  as  his  '  sorrow,'  but  only  pleasant  memories 
clustered  about  '  Hermann  and  Dorothea.' 

At  last,  in  the  year  1798,  the  way  seemed  clear  again 
for  '  Faust.'  By  this  time  Goethe  had  come  to  cherish 
a  great  respect  for  *  clearness.'  The  word  occurs  fre- 
quently in  his  writings  and  denotes  an  artistic  as  well 
as  a  scientific  ideal.  Quite  naturally,  therefore,  he  looked 
back  with  a  degree  of  cynicism  on  the  order  of  ideas 
that  had  found  expression  a  quarter  of  a  century  before 
in  the  early  scenes  of  *  Faust.'  It  was  a  fog-land  in  which 
he  had  wandered  for  a  season,  seeing  all  things  dimly. 
Magic  and  demonism;  escape  from  the  trammels  of  the 
flesh;  ecstatic  communion  with  a  planetary  spirit;  uni- 
versal experience  in  the  company  of  a  personal  devil 
doing  silly  tricks — what  had  such  imaginings  to  do  with 
the  reality  of  a  sane  man's  life?  He  could  not  possibly 
become  young  again  or  call  back  the  old  moods  and 
aspirations.  All  he  could  do  was  to  return  intellectually 
to  the  old  order  of  ideas  and  develop  it  in  accordance 
with  his  later  insight.  The  new  plan — part  of  it  may 
have  been  excogitated  in  Italy — was  as  follows: 

Faust  should  end  his  earthly  pilgrimage  in  a  rapt  pre- 
vision of  a  sturdy  people  living  on  land  that  he  had 
rescued  from  the  sea.  Prior  to  that,  however,  he  was 
to  be  led  out  into  'clearness'  intellectually;  that  is,  he 
was  to  compose  his  quarrel  with  life  and  arrive  at  the 
conviction  that  after  all  the  game  was  worth  the  candle. 
In  his  later  frame  of  mind  magic  would  appear  to  him, 
not  as  the  gateway  of  any  joy-bringing  knowledge,  but  as 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  117 

a  network  of  miserable  superstition  which  it  were  bet- 
ter to  have  kept  clear  of,  standing  as  a  *  man  alone  ' 
in  the  presence  of  nature.  And  then  he  was  to  be  '  saved  ' 
— taken  to  the  Christian  heaven,  albeit  he  had  never 
confessed  his  sins  or  asked  pardon.  Faust  the  evil- 
doer was  to  be  thought  of  as  a  *  confused '  servant  of 
the  Lord,  temporarily  blinded  by  passion,  but  funda- 
mentally 'good '  in  virtue  of  his  '  striving,'  that  is,  his 
energetic,  forward-pushing  nature.  To  sum  it  up:  The 
new  plan  was  to  transform  the  old  tragedy  of  sin  and 
damnation  into  a  modern  drama  of  wandering  in  the 
dark,  the  wandering  to  be  followed  in  due  time  by  emer- 
gence into  the  light  and  the  divine  approval. 

On  these  lines  Goethe  worked  with  intermittent  indus- 
try during  the  years  1 798-1 801.  He  filled  up  the  big  gap 
after  the  midnight  colloquy  of  Faust  and  Wagner,  duly 
accounting  for  the  compact  with  the  devil.  He  versified 
the  final  agony  of  Margaret  and  began  to  occupy  him- 
self with  what  was  to  come  after.  The  part  of  the  old 
story  dealing  with  Faust's  marriage  to  Helena  now  began 
to  assume  pivotal  importance :  Faust  was  to  be  redeemed 
from  his  selfish  narrowness  by  contact  with  the  Greek 
Queen  of  Beauty.  These  Helena  scenes,  taken  with  the 
necessary  court  scenes  and  those  concerned  with  the  death 
and  ascension  of  Faust,  would  swell  the  drama  far  be- 
yond the  ordinary  limits;  hence  the  decision  to  divide 
the  whole  vast  argument  into  two  Parts,  and  to  leave  the 
Second  to  the  future  along  with  '  Meister's  Wanderings.' 

Thus  the  project  now  took  shape  in  its  author's  mind 
as  a  gigantic  '  tragedy ' — so  called  because  it  would  lead 
up  to  the  death  of  its  hero — setting  forth  symbolically 
the  human  struggle  from  darkness  into  light.    To  round 


ii8  GOETHE 

out  the  scheme  he  planned  an  *  Epilog '  corresponding 
to  the  '  Prolog  in  Heaven/  a  *  Postlude '  forming  a  sort 
of  sequel  to  the  *  Prelude  in  the  Theater,'  and  a  lyric 
'  Farewell '  to  match  the  '  Dedication/ 

As  already  remarked,  Goethe's  general  attitude  toward 
'  Faust '  at  this  period  of  his  life  was  one  of  mild  cyni- 
cism. Letters  to  Schiller  refer  to  it  as  a  *  tragelaph ' 
and  a  *  barbarous  composition,'  and  there  are  other  slight- 
ing allusions.  He  saw  that  it  could  never  be  made  into 
a  congruous  work  of  art  according  to  any  accepted  canons. 
Its  unity  would  be  at  best  only  the  unity  of  his  own 
development,  its  strata  a  record  of  different  periods.  If 
this  was  to  be  so  in  any  event  why  be  meticulous  about 
its  consistency?  Anything  might  go  into  it — for  ex- 
ample the  *  Intermezzo,'  a  fantastic  collection  of  satirical 
epigrams  not  originally  intended  for  *  Faust '  at  all.    The 

*  Walpurgis-Night,'  too,  is  strangely  out  of  tune  with 
the  pathos  of  the  love-tragedy  in  which  it  is  embedded. 
The  idea  of  taking  Faust  for  a  lark  on  the  Brocken 
was  in  itself  good;  for  the  early  design  had  provided 
for  a  scene  in  which  Faust,  leaving  Gretchen  to  bear 
her  shame  alone,  should  give  himself  up  for  a  time  to 

*  disgusting  diversions.'  In  his  mad  rush  for  all  kinds 
of  experience  he  was  to  sound  the  depths  of  remorse 
and  self-contempt.  Still,  a  healthy  literary  conscience 
will  always  feel  that  Goethe,  who  had  now  become 
artistically  interested  in  the  grotesque  and  often  dis- 
gusting folk-lore  of  the  Brocken  carnival,  let  his  hero  sink 
a  little  too  deep  into  the  dirty  quagmire. 

During  a  portion  of  the  period  that  saw  the  comple- 
tion of  the  First  Part  of  '  Faust,' — it  was  not  published 
until   1808,  but  must  have  been  virtually  finished  by 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  119 

1802, — the  *  Natural  Daughter '  was  also  under  way. 
This  was  another  large  design  that  proved  refractory 
in  the  execution.  Planned  in  1799  a-^ter  a  reading  of 
the  alleged  memoirs  of  the  princess  Stephanie  de 
Bourbon-Conti,  it  was  to  have  been  a  play  of  ordinary 
length  in  blank  verse,  setting  forth  the  fate  of  a  high- 
minded  woman  who  had  been  made  the  victim  of  revo- 
lutionary intrigue.  Eugenie  would  thus  have  been  a  sort 
of  high-life  pendant  to  Dorothea,  and  there  seemed  a 
fine  opportunity  to  exhibit  the  Revolution  in  its  disas- 
trous effects  upon  the  social  order. 

For  a  while  Goethe  worked  at  the  '  Natural  Daughter  * 
with  great  confidence  and  enthusiasm ;  and  then,  as  twice 
before,  his  theme  outgrew  the  limits  set  for  it.  What 
should  have  been  the  first  two  acts  expanded  into  five — 
as  in  the  case  of  Schiller's  *  Piccolomini ' — and  so  it  was 
decided  to  make  a  trilogy  of  it.  Ere  long,  however, 
the  ardor  of  composition  cooled  and  the  project  was 
dropped,  never  to  be  resumed.  Of  the  contemplated 
second  and  third  parts  there  remain  only  prose  sketches 
which  give  no  very  clear  idea  of  the  dramatic  devel- 
opment. Probably  it  is  just  as  well  so;  for  while  there 
is  much  of  Goethe's  ripe  wisdom  in  the  '  Natural  Daugh- 
ter,' and  while  the  verse  is  at  times  magnificent  as  poetry, 
it  is  on  the  whole  hopelessly  undramatic  and  unlifelike — 
a  splendid  demonstration  of  a  theory  that  may  be  sound 
within  limits,  but  will  not  bear  pressing  to  an  extreme. 

It  is  the  theory  that  art  at  its  best  must  represent 
only  the  typical  in  human  nature.  To  this  position  Goethe 
had  been  led  by  his  excessive  admiration  of  Greek  art. 
What  did  not  conform  to  the  Greek  canons  of  simplic- 
ity, dignity,  and  nobility,  he  regarded  as  more  or  less 


I20  GOETHE 

bad.  The  local  and  temporal,  the  peculiar  and  indi- 
vidual, all  vulgar  actuality,  had  only  an  inferior  standing 
before  his  critical  tribunal.  So  he  endeavored  in  the 
*  Natural  Daughter  *  to  present  human  nature  in  its  pure 
essence,  stript  of  all  abnormality  and  accident,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  depict  a  group  of  persons  whose  brief 
traffic  on  the  stage  should  body  forth  the  spirit  of  the 
Revolution.  He  gave  his  characters,  except  the  heroine 
herself,  no  individual  names,  but  only  titles  serving  to 
pigeon-hole  them  in  the  social  order.  There  is  nothing 
to  indicate  the  time  or  place  of  the  action.  It  is  all  gen- 
eralized and  poetized  to  the  very  utmost — mere  litera- 
ture in  the  bad  as  well  as  in  the  good  sense  of  that  phrase. 
To  propagate  his  views  of  art  and  hold  up  the  ban- 
ner of  the  antique,  Goethe  founded  in  1798  a  journal 
called  the  Propylden,  which  kept  afloat  with  difficulty 
for  three  years  and  then  went  the  way  of  the  Horen. 
In  this  new  enterprise  he  had  the  assistance  of  Heinrich 
Meyer,  who  had  now  taken  up  his  abode  in  Weimar,  well 
content  to  place  his  modest  talent  at  Goethe's  disposal 
and  to  shine  by  reflected  light.  The  papers  published 
in  the  Propylden  have  now  but  small  intrinsic  interest, 
the  best  of  them  being  the  novelette  called  the  '  Collector 
and  his  Friends.'  It  is  prosy  as  a  story  but  throws  inter- 
esting side-lights  on  Goethe's  way  of  thinking  at  this 
period  of  his  life.  Speaking  broadly,  it  was  his  view 
that  the  ancients  were  unsurpassable  in  the  domain  of 
form;  wherefore  the  moderns  could  aspire  to  nothing 
better  than  to  pour  their  new  wine  into  the  old  bottles. 
In  this  spirit  he  undertook  to  vie  with  Homer  by  writ- 
ing an  *  Achilleid  '  in  heroic  hexameters.  The  extant 
verses  are  fine  in  their  way,  but  of  course  they  are  not 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  121 

Homer.  Their  essential  savor  is  as  modern  as  that  of 
the  noble  elegy  '  Alexis  and  Dora,'  or  that  of  the  little 
masque  '  Palaeophron  and  Neoterpe.' 

Temporarily,  then,  the  broadest  man  in  Europe  had 
actually  become  a  little  narrow  in  his  classicism.  It  looked 
as  if  the  storm  and  stress  of  his  own  youth  and  the  life- 
long apostleship  of  his  friend  Herder,  from  whom  he  had 
now  become  somewhat  alienated,  had  all  gone  for  naught. 
Art  at  its  best  was  no  longer  the  free  expression  of  feel- 
ing or  the  mirror  of  a  people's  life;  it  was  an  affair  of 
the  closet,  of  erudition,  of  a  highly-refined  technic  and 
a  very  select  public — in  short,  a  noble  game  to  be  played 
in  accordance  with  conventional  rules.  '  In  limitation 
the  master  begins  to  reveals  himself,  and  only  the  law  can 
give  us  freedom ' — such  is  the  dictum  of  a  well-known 
sonnet. 

It  was  partly  in  the  spirit  of  this  militant  classicism, 
partly  to  increase  the  repertory  of  his  theater,  and  partly 
to  school  his  actors  in  the  noble  style,  that  he  now  trans- 
lated and  put  on  the  stage  Voltaire's  '  Tancred '  and 
'  Mahomet ' — plays  for  which  the  German  public  of  that 
day  could  of  course  have  but  little  stomach.  Naturally 
the  initial  noise  of  the  Romantic  School  was  an  offense 
to  him,  albeit  both  the  Schlegels  admired  and  praised  him. 
The  elder  brother  in  particular  did  effective  service  as 
a  critical  interpreter  of  his  work,  and  as  a  mediator  be- 
tween him  and  the  general  literary  public  from  which  he 
had  become  estranged.  But  Goethe  detested  the  Cathol- 
icizing drift  of  the  time.  The  early  signs  of  pre- 
Raphaelitism,  such  as  Tieck-Wackenroder's  '  Heart- 
effusions  '  and  Tieck's  '  Franz  Sternbald,'  were  as  a  thorn 
in  his  flesh.     It  was  now,  if  ever,  that  he  deserved  the 


122  GOETHE 

name  of  pagan.  In  his  view  of  religion,  as  a  matter  of 
feeling  and  belief,  he  had  not  departed  from  the  tolerant 
liberalism  of  his  youth;  but  the  favorite  subjects  of  the 
pre-Raphaelite  painters — agony  and  ecstasy,  the  distorted 
face,  the  mortification  of  the  flesh — were  to  him  a  per- 
version and  degradation  of  human  nature,  and  there- 
fore bad  art.  He  preferred  his  Greek  gods  and  god- 
desses, with  their  calm,  free,  full-orbed  humanity. 

The  ripest  and  most  winsome  expression  of  Goethe's 
Hellenism  is  found  in  his  account  of  Winckelmann,  a 
man  after  his  own  heart.  It  was  written  in  1804  and 
1805.  Some  letters  of  Winckelmann  to  Berendis,  who 
had  died  in  1783  in  the  service  of  the  Weimar  court, 
had  been  turned  over  to  Goethe  for  publication.  By  way 
of  introduction  to  the  letters  he  chose,  not  to  tell  the 
story  of  Winckelmann's  remarkable  career  in  a  straight- 
forward narrative,  but  to  describe  and  comment  on  the 
principal  factors  of  his  spiritual  development.  The  theory 
he  had  evolved  with  regard  to  sculpture  is  here  applied 
to  biography.  There  are  no  dates,  no  vulgar  details; 
there  is  no  narrative.  Instead  of  a  chronological  sequence 
of  chapters  we  get  such  headings  as  Antiquity,  Pagan- 
ism, Friendship,  Beauty,  Catholicism,  Perception  of 
Greek  Art.  It  is  the  polar  opposite  of  the  Boswellian 
method  and  results  in  an  ideal  sketch  which  reveals  little 
of  Winckelmann's  specific  individuality,  but  much  of  the 
author's  philosophy.  A  famous  passage  occurring  in 
the  section  entitled  Antikes  may  be  quoted  once  again: 

When  the  healthy  nature  of  man  works  as  a  whole;  when 
he  feels  the  world  he  lives  in  as  a  great,  beautiful,  noble,  and 
precious  totality;  when  the  inner  harmony  yields  him  a  pure 
and   free  delight, — then   the  universe,   if   it  could   itself   feel. 


ALLIANCE  WITH  SCHILLER  123 

would  shout  with  joy  over  the  attainment  of  its  goal  and  ad- 
mire the  culmination  of  its  own  evolutionary  effort.  For  why 
all  this  expenditure  of  suns  and  planets  and  moons,  of  stars 
and  milky  ways,  of  comets  and  nebulas,  of  worlds  made  and 
making,  unless  at  last  a  fortunate  man  unconsciously  enjoys 
his  existence? 


In  the  preceding  review  of  Goethe's  literary  activities 
during  the  fruitful  period  of  his  connection  with  Schiller 
little  has  been  said  of  the  externalities  of  his  life  and 
nothing  at  all  of  his  scientific  studies.  Aside  from  tak- 
ing the  waters  at  Karlsbad  in  the  summer  of  1795  and 
of  Pyrmont  in  1801,  his  traveling  was  confined  to  the 
Swiss  tour  above  mentioned.  At  one  time  he  planned  a 
third  visit  to  Italy  for  the  purpose  of  collecting  materials 
for  an  art-history  of  that  country,  but  the  operations  of 
young  Bonaparte  caused  him  to  give  up  that  project. 
He  continued  his  investigations  in  botany,  anatomy,  com- 
parative osteology,  geology,  mineralogy,  and  optics,  often 
visiting  Jena  in  the  interest  of  his  researches.  Withal 
he  gave  a  great  deal  of  time  to  the  little  Weimar  theater, 
which  was  reopened  in  October,  1798,  with  a  perform- 
ance of  '  Wallenstein's  Camp.'  The  following  year 
Schiller  took  a  house  in  Weimar  that  he  might  be  nearer 
the  theater,  and  thenceforth  he  and  Goethe  were  neigh- 
bors in  space  as  well  as  literary  allies  and  dramaturgic 
co-workers.  But  Schiller  was  already  marked  for  an 
early  death.  In  spite  of  his  iron  resolution  and  his  great 
caution  his  health  failed  more  and  more.  The  end  came 
on  the  9th  of  May,  1805.  ^^  was  the  greatest  bereave- 
ment that  had  ever  fallen  to  Goethe's  lot. 


CHAPTER  VII 
MONARCH    OF    EUROPEAN    LETTERS 

The  current  of  Goethe's  life  now  broadens  out  into 
a  calm  and  lordly  river  which  nothing  can  any  more  bend 
from  its  course,  albeit  the  winds  of  passion  may  still 
ruffle  its  surface.  His  conviction  as  to  the  pre-eminent 
merit  of  the  Greeks  remained  a  fundamental  article  of 
his  creed,  but  his  mind  gradually  became  more  hospi- 
table to  impressions  from  other  sources.  Amid  the  patri- 
otic fervors  of  the  Napoleonic  era  he  kept  cool,  at  least 
to  outward  observation,  thereby  making  enemies  whose 
censure  has  never  entirely  died  out.  Yet  on  the  whole 
his  prestige  increased,  especially  after  the  publication 
of  the  '  Elective  Affinities  '  and  the  First  Part  of  '  Faust.' 
Popular  he  did  not  become  even  then,  and  never  has  been 
to  this  day.  But  among  the  intellectuals  an  ever-increas- 
ing number  came  under  the  spell  of  his  genius  and 
recognized  his  peculiar  sovranty  among  German  authors. 
It  was  now  that  they  began  to  call  him  Meister,  a  name 
which  in  time  gave  way  to  the  more  venerable  Altmeister. 

With  the  death  of  Schiller  the  great  days  of  the  little 
Weimar  theater  came  to  an  end.  Goethe  indeed  con- 
tinued to  direct  it,  but  he  knew  very  well  that  its  glory 
and  strength  had  departed.  To  honor  the  memory  of 
his  friend  he  arranged  for  a  performance  of  the  '  Song 
of  the  Bell '  in  August,  1805,  and  himself  wrote  a  noble 

124 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS        125 

epilog  in  which  Schiller  is  eulogized  with  matchless  art, 
and  the  pride  and  joy  of  memory  are  made  to  '  hush 
into  silence  all  the  mourner's  grief.'  To  the  mighty 
spirit  they  had  known  so  well  in  his  daily  walk  and  con- 
versation is  ascribed  the  '  youth  that  never  fades  and  the 
courage  that  sooner  or  later  conquers  the  resistance  of 
the  stolid  world.'  The  poem  as  we  know  it  is  the  result 
of  repeated  revisions  and  additions  which  were  made  for 
other  performances  of  the  '  Bell '  in  after  years. 

The  opening  stanzas  indicate  that  in  the  summer  of 
1805  the  Weimarians  were  feeling  secure  in  the  pros- 
pect of  peace.  And  so  it  was.  There  was  great  confi- 
dence in  the  military  strength  of  Prussia,  and  at  the  same 
time  a  very  general  feeling  that  war  was  an  affair  of 
princes  and  governments.  Before  the  end  of  the  year 
Austria  had  been  beaten  at  Ulm  and  Austerlitz,  and  then 
came  the  collapse  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  the 
calamity  of  Prussia.  Goethe  spent  the  summer  of  1806 
at  Karlsbad,  occupied  with  scientific  studies  and  social 
diversions,  and  returned  to  Weimar  on  the  6th  of  Octo- 
ber. On  the  loth  the  Weimarians  heard  the  roar  of 
cannon  in  the  south,  and  the  next  day  Prussian  and 
Saxon  soldiers,  hungry  and  dispirited,  began  to  stream 
through  the  town.  The  court-folk  fled — Karl  August 
was  commanding  a  battalion  on  the  Prussian  side — 
except  the  Duchess  Luise,  who  now  showed  that  she 
was  made  of  heroic  stuff.  She  refused  to  go,  even  if 
she  should  be  buried  in  the  ruins  of  Weimar.  On  the 
1 2th  Prince  Hohenlohe,  the  very  gentlemanly  Prussian 
commander,  sent  an  urgent  request  to  Minister  von 
Goethe  for  leave  to  requisition  food  and  firewood,  but 
received  no  answer. 


126  GOETHE 

At  daylight  on  the  14th  the  great  battle  of  Jena  began. 
By  three  o'clock  the  Germans  were  in  full  retreat,  and 
by  nightfall  French  soldiers  were  plundering  and  burn- 
ing in  Weimar.  A  squad  of  them  entered  the  stately- 
looking  house  on  the  Frauenplan  and  might  perhaps  have 
done  some  despite  to  its  owner  had  not  the  valiant  Chris- 
tiane  intervened  and  bought  them  off  with  some  of  her 
silver  candlesticks.  Napoleon  arrived  on  the  15th  and 
thenceforth  there  was  no  further  danger.  Marshals 
Augereau,  Lannes,  and  Ney  were  quartered  for  a  while 
in  Goethe's  house,  and  there  was  more  or  less  of  war's 
inferno  in  the  town,  but  its  savant  distingue  was  treated 
with  all  due  respect.  His  own  report,  sent  in  identical 
form  to  a  number  of  friends  a  few  days  later,  runs : 

We  live !  As  by  a  miracle  our  house  escaped  plundering  and 
burning.  The  reigning  duchess  passed  most  terrible  hours 
with  us,  and  to  her  we  owe  some  hope  of  future  welfare  as 
well  as  the  present  safety  of  the  palace. 

A  few  days  later  Goethe  was  married  in  church  to 
the  '  little  friend  who  had  done  so  much  for  him,'  and 
the  date  of  the  Battle  of  Jena  was  inscribed  on  the  wed- 
ding-rings. The  marriage,  however,  was  not  a  sudden 
freak  of  chivalrous  feeling,  but  an  old  purpose  quickly 
ripened  by  the  troublous  times.  By  this  act  of  justice 
to  the  woman  who  had  compromised  herself  socially 
for  his  sake  he  at  the  same  time  put  an  end  to  the  equiv- 
ocal status  of  his  children.  But  her  new  dignity  made 
little  change  in  Frau  von  Goethe's  life.  She  had  small 
affinity  for  the  aristocratic  society  to  which  her  husband 
now  loyally  tried  to  introduce  her. 

For  some  time  after  the  great  battle  Goethe  was  very 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS       127 

busy  helping  the  friends  who  had  suffered  and  trying 
to  restore  the  normal  order.  In  particular  he  was  con- 
cerned about  the  University  of  Jena.  It  was  well  known 
that  Napoleon  did  not  love  the  German  universities  and 
that  he  was  wroth  with  the  Duke  of  Weimar.  There 
was  thus  reason  to  fear  that  the  all-powerful  emperor 
would  close  the  University  of  Jena,  as  he  actually  did 
that  of  Halle,  and  then  what  would  become  of  the  pre- 
cious scientific  collections  which  had  long  been  Goethe's 
especial  care?  To  avert  the  threatening  danger  a  dele- 
gation visited  the  Secretary  of  State,  M.  Maret,  then 
sojourning  in  Naumburg,  taking  with  them  a  letter  from 
Goethe  to  his  friend  M.  Denon,  whose  aid  was  hoped 
for.  A  part  of  the  letter,  which  was  written  in  French, 
has  the  following  import : ' 

Scarcely  had  you  gone  when  the  evils  that  have  over- 
whelmed the  University  of  Jena  were  brought  to  my  attention 
anew  by  certain  worthy  members  who  conjure  me  to  commend 
them  to  your  protection.  ...  At  present  I  hope  they  may  find 
you  in  Naumburg,  and  I  pray  you  to  do  everything  possible  for 
them  and  for  me.  I  say  for  me,  because  the  institutions  of 
Jena  were  in  part  my  work,  and  I  am  on  the  point  of  seeing 
the  labors  of  thirty  years  lost  forever. 

As  this  effort  proved  ^  fruitless  the  Jena  professors 
decided  to  appeal  to  M.  Berthier,  Secretary  of  War. 
Their  petition  was  accompanied  by  a  careful  memoran- 
dum in  which  Goethe  impressively  set  forth  the  mani- 
fold services  of  Jena  and  Weimar  to  civilization.  He 
spoke  of  Wieland,  the  '  dean  of  German  literature,*  of 
good  work  done  for  science  and  art,  and  especially  of 
the  drawing-school  founded  by  Privy  Councilor  von 
Goethe.    This  time  the  petitioners  were  successful.    On 


128  GOETHE 

the  24th  of  November  an  edict  was  issued  under  im- 
perial authority  which  permitted  the  resumption,  or 
rather  the  continuance,  of  lectures.  But  the  great  days 
of  Jena,  the  period  of  its  brief  pre-eminence  among  the 
German  universities,  had  departed. 

It  was  Napoleon's  express  declaration  that  he  had 
spared  the  Duke  of  Weimar  solely  for  the  sake  of  the 
Duchess.  After  the  collapse  of  the  Prussian  military 
power  Karl  August  procured  his  dismissal  and  accepted 
his  inevitable  fate,  which  was  to  join  the  Confederation 
of  the  Rhine  and  pay  the  large  indemnity  of  2,200,000 
francs.  The  tax  was  a  heavy  burden  and  Weimar  was 
now  in  a  sense  subject  to  the  overlordship  of  Napoleon; 
but  the  escape  from  the  Prussian  entanglement  was  not 
a  matter  of  grief  to  Goethe,  who  kept  on  the  even  tenor 
of  his  way  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  He  was  now 
occupied  with  a  new  edition  of  his  works  to  be  pub- 
lished by  Gotta  of  Stuttgart,  and  was  all  but  submerged  in 
his  '  Theory  of  Color.'  His  diary  for  1807  and  1808, 
tho  it  contains  an  entry  for  every  day,  has  hardly  a 
reference  to  the  great  public  questions  of  the  time.  And 
the  same  is  true  of  his  letters,  which  touch  on  every  sub- 
ject but  politics. 

The  famous  interviews  with  Napoleon  took  place  in 
October,  1808.  The  Emperor  of  the  French,  so  lately 
an  obscure  lieutenant  of  artillery,  was  now  at  the  acme 
of  his  European  glory.  Prussia  and  Austria  were  vir- 
tually in  his  power  and  the  minor  German  princes  com- 
prising the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  were  either  the 
willing  or  the  unwilling  agents  of  his  policy.  His  recent 
campaigns  had  increased  his  prestige,  for  the  battles  of 
Eylau  and  Friedland,  indecisive  as  the  slaughter  was, 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS        129 

had  been  heralded  as  great  French  victories.  It  is  true 
that  in  Spain  and  Portugal  the  gigantic  autocracy  was 
beginning  to  crumble,  but  who  could  have  dreamed  just 
then  that  the  British  troops  operating  in  the  Peninsula 
would  soon  become  a  factor  of  importance  in  shattering 
the  power  of  Napoleon? 

It  was  under  such  circumstances  that  the  all-powerful 
emperor  called  a  congress  of  princes  to  bask  in  the  light 
of  his  countenance  at  Erfurt,  where  he  was  then  hold- 
ing court.  They  came  plentifully — emperors,  kings,  and 
minor  potentates  to  the  number  of  two  score,  besides 
a  host  of  generals  and  ministers  of  state.  At  the  ex- 
press request  of  the  Duke  of  Weimar,  whose  loyalty  to 
the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  was  justly  under  sus- 
picion, Goethe  joined  the  assembly  of  notables  and  was 
received  by  Napoleon  on  the  2nd  of  October.  Sitting 
at  breakfast  the  busy  monarch  scrutinized  his  visitor 
carefully,  as  he  was  shown  in,  and  then  said,  Votis  etes 
un  homme.  Perhaps  he  may  have  said,  Voild  un  hoimne, 
as  if  speaking  to  some  bystander.  In  any  case  the  much- 
quoted  remark  was  a  complimentary  greeting  at  the 
beginning  of  an  hour's  conversation,  not  a  summing  up 
of  impressions  at  the  end  of  it.  Very  likely  the  frank 
Corsican,  whose  business  at  this  time  was  largely  with 
blue-blooded  ephemerids  and  sycophants  with  axes  to 
grind,  meant  to  express  his  honest  pleasure  at  meeting 
a  distinguished  author  who  shone  by  his  own  light  and 
was  no  man's  satellite.  On  learning  that  Goethe  had 
translated  Voltaire's  '  Mahomet,'  Napoleon  pronounced 
it  a  bad  play  in  which  the  conqueror  of  the  world  made 
a  sorry  exhibition  of  himself.  Then  they  talked  of  '  Wer- 
ther,'  which  Napoleon  said  he  had  read  repeatedly  and 


I30  GOETHE 

about  which  he  made  a  shrewd  remark  in  the  way  of 
criticism.  The  talk  was  interspersed  with  jest  and 
laughter  and  the  two  men  separated  with  a  very  good 
opinion  of  each  other. 

At  Erfurt  Goethe  had  an  opportunity  to  see  the  famous 
Talma  in  French  tragedy  and  to  compare  his  style  with 
that  which  they  had  been  trying  to  develop  at  Weimar. 
On  the  6th  of  October  Napoleon  paid  a  ceremonial  visit 
in  Weimar,  taking  along  his  players,  who  gave  a  per- 
formance of  Voltaire's  *  Death  of  Caesar '  on  the  Wei- 
mar stage.  After  the  play  the  emperor  again  talked  with 
Goethe  about  the  drama,  urging  him  to  write  a  tragedy 
on  the  death  of  Caesar  and  to  outdo  Voltaire  by  em- 
phasizing Caesar's  large-hearted  plans  for  the  good  of 
mankind.  He  wanted  Goethe  to  come  to  Paris,  where 
there  would  be  a  larger  field  for  his  talents,  and  so  forth. 
It  was  all  very  pleasant,  very  obliging.  A  few  days  later 
came  the  badge  of  the  French  Legion  of  Honor,  and 
he  who,  back  in  1782,  had  thought  nothing  at  all  of  his 
patent  of  nobility  from  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  was 
now  delighted  beyond  measure.    He  wrote  to  Cotta : 

I  will  gladly  confess  that  nothing  higher  or  more  gratifying 
could  happen  in  my  life  than  to  stand  thus  before  the  French 
emperor.  Without  going  into  the  details  of  our  talk  I  may 
say  that  no  great  man  ever  before  received  me  in  such  fashion 
— trustfully  respecting  my  individuality  and  showing  unmis- 
takably that  my  nature  suited  him. 

Writers  who  think  nothing  but  ill  of  Napoleon  are 
wont  to  blame  Goethe  for  thinking  so  well  of  him  in 
1808  and  for  taking  no  part  with  voice  or  pen  in  the 
subsequent  effort  to  overthrow  him.  Nothing  is  more 
unreasonable,  however,  than  to  judge  a  Weimar ian  of 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS       131 

that  day  from  the  standpoint  of  a  national  sentiment 
begotten  of  later  events.  A  German  to  the  core  Goethe 
hoped  and  foresaw  great  things  for  the  German  peo- 
ple; but  he  was  not  a  Prussian  or  an  Austrian  and  had 
no  reason  to  believe  that  the  higher  interests  of  German 
civilization  were  anywise  bound  up  with  the  aggran- 
dizement of  either  of  these  powers.  The  kind  of  German 
unity  that  was  finally  effected  in  1871  by  the  exclusion 
of  Austria  was  not  then  in  anyone's  mind  and  would 
probably  have  seemed  to  him  a  lame  solution  of  the 
problem.  He  had  grown  up  under  the  old  empire  with- 
out directly  feeling  any  bad  effects  from  its  political 
impotence,  and  had  given  himself  freely  to  the  service 
of  a  small  state  which  had  prospered  and  won  a  high 
place  in  the  annals  of  civilization:  why  should  he  sup- 
pose that  it  would  have  fared  any  better  as  a  member 
of  a  strong  federal  state?  The  day  of  federalism  and 
nationalism  had  not  yet  come. 

Add  to  this  that  Goethe  looked  with  anxiety  on  the 
increasing  influence  of  Russia  in  German  affairs,  and 
we  shall  have  a  sufficient  explanation  of  his  seeming 
apathy  during  the  life-and-death  struggle  of  the  wars 
of  liberation.  He  preferred  to  see  the  Germans  leagued 
with  French  civilization  rather  than  with  the  semi- 
barbarism  of  the  Muscovites.  He  saw  plainly  enough 
that,  while  riding  rough-shod  over  dynastic  pretensions 
and  patriotic  feeling,  Napoleon  had  let  in  a  flood  of  good 
ideas.  Not  only  had  the  French  emperor  been  very  gra- 
cious to  him  personally,  but  he  had  shown  a  generous 
and  forgiving  spirit  to  the  Duke  of  Weimar.  Under  the 
circumstances  opposition  to  the  Napoleonic  regimen 
would  have  been  the  surest  way  to  bring  disaster  on 


132  GOETHE 

the  little  duchy  and  its  ruling  house,  which  were  en- 
deared to  him  by  the  ties  of  thirty  years.  The  only  sane 
course  was  acquiescence. 

From  the  trials  and  anxieties  incident  to  Napoleon's 
domination  Goethe  took  refuge  in  hard  work — pulled  this 
way  and  that,  as  of  yore,  by  his  varied  interests.  Thus 
his  works  ripened  slowly,  with  many  interruptions,  in  a 
confused  Neheneinander.  In  1807,  as  we  have  seen,  he 
was  mainly  occupied  with  his  *  Theory  of  Color,'  labori- 
ously repeating  the  optical  experiments  of  Newton  and 
finding  it  a  '  thankless  task  to  prove  step  by  step  that  the 
world  has  been  mistaken  for  hundreds  of  years.'  By  this 
time,  however,  he  had  formed  a  vague  plan  of  continuing 
*  Wilhelm  Meister '  in  a  series  of  short  stories  all  turning 
on  the  subject  of  renunciation.  During  the  summer,  while 
taking  his  usual  vacation  at  Karlsbad,  he  seems  to  have 
written  a  few  tales  with  that  end  in  view.  Toward  the 
end  of  the  year  he  went  over  to  Jena  to  find  quiet  and 
seclusion  for  work.  But  instead  of  that  he  found  the 
inspiration  for  a  string  of  sonnets. 

To  while  away  the  otherwise  lonely  and  tedious  winter 
evenings  he  resorted  to  the  homes  of  congenial  friends, 
among  whom  was  the  bookseller  Frommann.  One  of  the 
members  of  the  Frommann  household  was  Wilhelmina 
Herzlieb,  a  shy  girl  of  eighteen  whom  Goethe  had  known 
casually  for  ten  years.  He  liked  her  very  much — more 
than  was  '  proper,'  as  he  admitted  to  Zelter  some  six  years 
later — while  she  seems  to  have  looked  up  to  him  with  ven- 
eration, counting  herself  blest  to  be  admitted  to  such 
choice  society.  And  then  there  was  Zacharias  Werner, 
who  turned  up  in  Jena  at  this  time  in  the  morning  blush 
of  his  fame  as  the  author  of  the  '  Sons  of  the  Vale '  and 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS        133 

'  Martin  Luther.'  The  Frommann  circle  took  him  to  their 
hearts  and  homes,  and  Goethe  evidently  thought  well  of 
him — for  a  while.  Perhaps  he  may  have  regarded  him 
as  the  most  promising  candidate  then  in  sight  for  the 
mantle  of  Schiller. 

It  was  mainly  on  Werner's  initiative,  seemingly,  that 
these  excellent  folk,  men  and  women,  took  to  be-poetizing 
one  another  in  sonnets.  Curiously  enough,  with  all  his 
liking  for  things  Italian  and  in  spite  of  the  example  of 
Burger  and  the  Romanticists,  Goethe  seems  never  before 
to  have  cared  greatly  for  the  sonnet.  Probably  he  had 
considered  it  a  mere  play  of  metrical  ingenuity  wherein 
the  constraints  of  form  must  inevitably  hinder  the  free 
and  natural  expression  of  poetic  feeling.  Now,  however, 
he  found  that,  for  a  master,  this  was  not  really  so.  After 
all,  the  basis  of  art  was  wiUing  acceptance  of  limitations. 
Hence  the  confession  of  faith  in  a  well-known  sonnet  of 
the  year  1802  beginning: 

Nature  and  Art  each  other  seem  to  flee, 

But  ere  we  know  it  have  composed  their  strife ; 
Repugnance,  too,  has  vanished  from  my  life, 

And  both,  it  seems,  attract  me  equally. 

For  his  Laura  he  chose  the  demure  and  all-unconscious 
Minna,  converting  Herdieb  into  lieb  Hers  and  addressing 
her  in  the  impassioned  language  appropriate  to  a  sonnet 
as 

Lieb  Kind,  mein  artig  Herz,  mein  einzig  Wesen. 

In  the  course  of  a  fortnight  he  found  that  his  poetic  game 
was  going  too  far,  so  he  deliberately  put  Minna  out  of 
his  thoughts. 


134  GOETHE 

Such  a  fleeting  episode  in  the  life  of  an  elderly  gentle- 
man of  fixed  habits  would  hardly  be  worth  chronicling  at 
such  length  were  it  not  that  some  persons  have  regarded 
it  as  the  fountain-head  of  the  '  Elective  Affinities.'  Their 
theory  is  that,  having  looked  into  and  recoiled  in  alarm 
from  the  depths  of  potential  wickedness  in  his  own  heart, 
Goethe  proceeded  to  imagine  a  man  who  should  not  recoil 
but  go  on  in  his  iniquity,  involving  himself  and  the  girl 
in  a  tragic  fate.  It  also  pertains  to  the  theory  that  this 
renunciation  of  Minna  caused  an  enduring  heartache 
from  which  the  writing  of  the  novel  at  last  gave  the 
needed  relief.  But  all  this  belongs  to  the  realm  of  literary 
mythology.  The  '  Elective  Affinities  *  is  not  veiled  biog- 
raphy but  a  work  of  the  imagination  strongly  tinged  with 
the  tendencies  of  the  new  Romanticism. 

Very  evidently  the  heart  of  the  tale  is  the  life,  charac- 
ter, and  death  of  Ottilie.  Hers  is  the  figure  most  carefully 
studied ;  for  her  sake,  mainly,  the  book  was  written.  A 
girl  of  great  natural  refinement,  with  a  passion  for  self- 
abnegation  and  the  service  of  others,  is  taken  into  the 
household  of  an  ill-matched  married  couple  called  Ed- 
ward and  Charlotte.  The  weak  Edward,  a  sort  of  middle- 
aged  Werther,  falls  in  love  with  Ottilie  and  imagines  that 
he  can  not  live  without  her.  She  meets  his  lawless  passion 
half-way  without  realizing  the  danger  or  the  badness  of 
her  conduct.  A  divorce  is  arranged.  Then  the  infant 
son  of  Edward  and  Charlotte  is  drowned  by  accident 
while  in  Ottilie's  care  under  circumstances  which  cause 
her  to  feel  that  she  was  to  blame  for  the  fatality.  Acute 
remorse  takes  possession  of  her  and  becomes  a  morbid 
obsession.  She  feels  that  she  must  renounce  not  only  love 
but  life  itself.    So  she  abstains  from  food,  pines  away, 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS        135 

and  dies — like  the  medieval  lady  who  had  eaten  the  heart 
of  her  lover. 

Such,  we  may  guess,  was  the  substance  of  the  compar- 
atively short  story  which  Goethe  wrote  in  the  summer  of 
1808 — a  tale  of  a  pure  soul  driven  by  a  poignant  sense 
of  remorse  to  court  the  peace  of  death;  in  short,  a  tale 
of  renunciation  raised  to  the  highest  possible  power.  But 
it  was  too  long  for  '  Wilhelm  Meister,'  too  short  for 
separate  publication  as  a  book.  So  the  author  proceeded 
to  expand  his  novelette  of  Ottilie's  renunciation  into  a 
full-sized  novel,  filling  in  details  about  landscape-garden- 
ing, architecture,  and  other  such  matters  that  happened 
to  interest  him  just  then,  and  inventing  some  subordinate 
characters  who  really  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  story. 
To  the  new  creation  he  gave  the  name  of  *  Elective  Affin- 
ities,' thereby  implying,  of  course,  a  certain  analogy  be- 
tween chemical  affinity  and  the  workings  of  sexual 
passion.  Charlotte  and  the  Captain  have  an  affinity  for 
each  other,  but  they  are  sensible  folk  in  whom  the  will 
and  the  sense  of  duty  prevail  over  the  blind  force  that 
would  pull  them  together.  In  Edward  and  Ottilie,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  counteragent  is  too  weak  for  effective 
resistance.  Both  succumb  to  fate,  but  Edward's  suicide 
is  not  very  convincing.  Such  a  moral  invertebrate  would 
never  be  equal  to  the  Great  Renunciation. 

The  quasi-scientific  title  has  always  been  of  dubious 
value  to  the  book's  reputation,  since  it  fixes  attention  on 
an  analogy  which  is  of  no  importance  for  the  story. 
Really  very  little  is  said  about  the  likeness  of  chemical 
affinity  to  sexual  attraction  and  that  little  could  easily 
be  spared.  But  the  title  gave  a  colorable  excuse  for  tax- 
ing the  '  old  heathen  ' — Goethe  gives  himself  that  name 


136  GOETHE 

in  a  letter  of  the  period — with  exploiting  an  immoral 
view  of  human  nature,  by  teaching  that  men  and  women 
must  sin  even  as  the  sparks  fly  upward.  To  this  it  is 
easy  to  reply  that  one  of  the  two  pairs  behaves  in  a  quite 
exemplary  manner,  and  that  wherever  there  is  direct 
comment  on  the  ethics  of  marriage  the  subject  is  treated 
nobly  and  with  genuine  moral  fervor.  On  the  whole 
what  we  get  is  not  at  all  a  defense  of  physical  deter- 
minism carried  over  into  the  moral  sphere,  but  rather 
an  object-lesson  in  the  tragic  danger  of  that  sort  of  thing. 
Loose  views  of  the  marriage  tie  were  just  then  very 
common  in  Goethe's  entourage,  and  he  himself  had  been 
something  of  a  transgressor.  He  wrote  the  novel  as  a 
sort  of  imaginative  penance.  It  is  as  if  he  were  saying: 
See  how  your  affinity  doctrine  works  in  a  case  that  I  will 
show  you. 

Another  product  of  the  years  1807  and  1808  was  the 
dramatic  fragment  '  Pandora,'  begun  at  the  instance  of 
two  literary  friends  who  had  asked  for  a  contribution 
to  their  new  journal  Prometheus.  In  his  youth,  it  will 
be  remembered,  Goethe  had  been  deeply  stirred  by  the 
story  of  the  heaven-defying,  man-befriending  Titan. 
Now,  however,  he  was  no  longer  minded  to  wage  poetic 
war  against  the  ever-living  gods,  for  he  had  come  to 
terms  with  them.  So,  purposing  to  undertake  something 
in  the  Promethean  vein,  he  chose  for  his  heroine  the  di- 
vine Pandora,  goddess  of  all  the  gifts,  who  had  come 
down  from  heaven  to  be  scorned  by  Prometheus  and 
taken  to  wife  by  his  brother  Epimetheus,  to  whom  she  had 
borne  two  daughters,  Elpore  and  Epimeleia.  And  then 
she  had  disappeared  and  the  Great  Welfare  somehow  de- 
pended on  her  return.     *  Pandora's  Return  '  was  the  orig- 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS        137 

inal  title  of  the  deep  symbolic  poem  which  was  to  body 
forth  certain  views  of  life.  Was  it  to  be  the  return  of 
Peace  to  a  war-distracted  world,  or  a  return  of  the 
Beauty  that  had  been  lost  with  the  glory  of  Greece,  or 
was  the  goddess  of  all  the  gifts  to  prepare  the  way  for 
some  kind  of  new  Golden  Age  in  the  life  of  man? 

As  only  one  act  was  finished — one  act  in  which  Pan- 
dora does  not  yet  appear — it  is  quite  impossible  to  answer 
these  questions  satisfactorily.  The  wisest  readers  of 
Goethe  differ  radically  in  their  interpretation  of  *  Pan- 
dora.' This  is  in  itself  evidence  enough  that,  whatever 
the  mark  aimed  at  may  have  been,  he  did  not  hit  it  in  the 
exposition.  Notwithstanding  all  the  lyric  splendor  of 
the  choruses  one  reads  ^  Pandora  '  with  a  certain  be- 
wilderment. Probably  it  was  Goethe's  consciousness  that 
his  symbolism  was  carrying  him  too  far  from  the  solid 
earth  into  the  blue  void  of  abstraction  that  caused  him 
to  lose  interest  in  the  theme.  Had  he  really  felt  that  an 
important  part  of  his  message  to  mankind  could  best  be 
conveyed  by  means  of  the  cryptic  symbolism  of  '  Pan- 
dora '  he  would  certainly  have  finished  it.  He  had  time 
enough. 

The  year  1808  saw  the  publication  of  the  First  Part 
of  '  Faust,'  which  had  been  virtually  finished  six  years 
before  in  accordance  with  the  plan  sketched  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter.  Now  for  the  first  time  it  was  possible 
for  an  attentive  reader  to  get  an  inkling  of  what  the 
author  of  '  Faust '  was  really  driving  at.  The  '  Frag- 
ment'  of  1790  had  left  the  plan  and  spirit  of  the  poem 
quite  in  the  vague.  There  was  the  legend,  with  which 
everybody  was  familiar,  and  the  natural  inference  from 
that  was  that  Goethe's  hero  was  riding  for  a  fall  like 


138  GOETHE 

his  legendary  prototype;  in  other  words,  that  he  was  to 
be  sent  to  hell  for  his  sins,  more  especially  for  his  be- 
trayal of  Gretchen.  Now,  however,  came  the  '  Prolog ' 
with  its  clear  intimations  of  the  outcome.  It  was  hence- 
forth patent  to  all  who  read  with  their  eyes  open  that 
the  new  '  Faust '  was  not  to  be  a  repetition  of  the  familiar 
tragedy  of  sin  and  damnation.  The  Devil  was  not  to 
triumph  in  the  end. 

There  was  still  room  enough,  to  be  sure,  for  a  rigid 
moralist  to  quarrel  with  the  philosophy  of  the  poem  and 
to  tax  its  author  with  holding  lax  views  on  the  subject  of 
sin  and  punishment.  But  what  no  one  could  deny  or 
resist  was  the  marvelous  power  of  the  poetry.  Here  was 
at  last  something  utterly  incommensurable  with  aught 
that  had  gone  before  in  the  whole  history  of  the  world's 
literature;  a  vast  design  of  many-sided  interest;  the  Di- 
vine Comedy  of  the  modern  man. 

To  turn  from  *  Faust '  to  the  *  Theory  of  Color '  is  to 
pass  from  Goethe  at  his  best  to  that  part  of  his  life-work 
which  is  now  most  negligible.  The  laborious  researches 
in  optics  which  were  given  to  the  world  in  1810  are  now 
seldom  read  by  specialists  in  that  field,  because  they  con- 
tain nothing  of  recognized  value  in  the  history  of  the 
science.  He  performed  a  vast  number  of  experiments, 
sparing  neither  time  nor  toil  in  his  efforts  to  find  out  the 
exact  facts  of  color-sensation,  but  it  was  not  given  him 
to  contribute  anything  of  note  to  the  explanation  of  the 
facts,  either  on  the  physical  or  on  the  psychological  side. 
The  modern  science,  built  up  largely  by  means  of  math- 
ematical processes  of  which  he  knew  not  even  the  hum- 
blest rudiments,  has  traveled  a  road  that  he  could  scarcely 
have  imagined.     What  he  did  in  the  fields  of  botany 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS       139 

and  zoology  was  at  least  in  the  direction,  so  to  speak,  of 
coming  developments.  But  it  is  not  so  with  his  work  in 
optics.  There  he  struck  off  on  a  path  of  his  own,  and 
the  scientific  world  has  from  the  first  declined  to  follow 
him. 

He  came  to  the  study  of  color  originally  by  way  of 
his  interest  in  painting.  What  were  the  laws  governing 
the  sensations  produced  by  the  juxtaposition  and  the 
blending  of  colors,  and  by  the  distribution  of  light  and 
shade?  In  short,  what  was  color?  Going  to  the  books 
for  instruction  he  found  them  all  teaching,  on  the  au- 
thority of  'Newton,  that  color  is,  so  to  speak,  a  fragment 
of  light;  in  other  words,  that  sunlight  is  decomposable 
into  the  seven  prismatic  colors,  and  that  these  colors  and 
certain  groups  of  them  can  be  recomposed  into  white 
light.  When  he  undertook,  however,  to  combine  any 
group  of  prismatic  colors  with  a  view  to  getting  white 
light,  the  result  was  never  the  pure  white  of  freshly 
fallen  snow,  but  always  a  shade  of  gray — a  momentously 
different  thing,  it  seemed  to  him.  So  he  came  to  the  con- 
clusion that  Newton  either  had  not  observed  correctly  or 
had  perverted  the  truth  by  passing  off  gray  for  white. 
Evidently  the  whole  pretended  science  of  color  was  noth- 
ing but  a  tissue  of  error.  It  w^ould  be  necessary  to  begin 
anew  and  treat  the  subject  as  if  nothing  were  known 
about  it.  And  the  first  thing  needed  was  a  body  of  care- 
ful observations  which  might  serve  as  a  basis  for  a  sound 
theory.  To  this  work  he  addressed  himself.  He  was 
fully  conscious  of  his  weakness  in  mathematics,  but  he 
thought  that  mathematics  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
subject  and  might  even  befog  it  by  filling  the  mind  with 
preconceptions.    It  was  all  a  matter  of  seeing  and  telling 


I40  GOETHE 

the  truth  about  the  thing  seen — something  he  believed  he 
could  do  as  well  as  another. 

Very  soon,  however,  he  found  that  observation  and 
theory  must  inevitably  go  hand  in  hand.  So  he  pro- 
ceeded to  work  out  a  theory — as  early  as  1793,  when  he 
was  as  yet  a  mere  tyro  in  observation, — which  he  never 
afterwards  radically  modified.  The  main  points  of  it 
were  that  sunlight  is  the  *  simplest,  most  homogeneous, 
most  indivisible  entity  that  we  are  acquainted  with  ' ;  that 
it  can  not  be  composed  of  colored  lights,  since  bright  can 
never  be  composed  of  dark;  that  color  is  a  modification 
of  white  light  by  the  objects  illuminated,  being  a  mixture 
of  *  bright '  and  'dim'  (hell  and  triib);  that  the  pris- 
matic refraction  or  refrangibility  of  light  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  causation  of  color,  being  at  the  most  only  one 
of  its  occasions. 

With  regard  to  these  positions  it  is  to  be  observed,  first 
of  all,  that  Goethe,  like  Newton  himself,  supposed  light 
to  be  an  attenuated  form  of  matter.  From  this  point  of 
view  he  found  it  easiest  to  think  of  coloration  as  a  process 
of  'dimming'  (Triihung),  somewhat  as  pure  water  is 
*  dimmed  '  by  the  admixture  of  some  less  transparent 
substance.  According  to  the  modern  wave-theory  the 
color  of  light,  that  is,  the  sensation  of  color  it  produces, 
depends  solely  on  the  rate  of  vibration  of  the  luminif- 
erous  ether,  and  white  light  is  a  combination  of  all  the 
colors  in  a  definite  proportion.  Of  this  hypothesis  Goethe 
knew  nothing.  Had  anyone  told  him  that  red  and  violet 
each  corresponded  to  so-and-so-many  billions  of  vibra- 
tions per  second  he  would  probably  have  regarded  that  as 
an  absurd  attempt  to  measure  the  immeasurable.  Per- 
haps he  might  have  asked  how  many  vibrations  would 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS        141 

correspond  to  the  sense  of  beauty.  If  we  criticize  him 
at  all  we  must  in  fairness  do  so  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  old  corpuscular  theory.  On  that  theory  the  weak 
point  in  his  doctrine  was  his  extremely  vague  use  of  the 
term  triib,  which  plays  a  very  important  role  in  his  writ- 
ings. It  might  mean  almost  anything  from  the  lightest 
of  gray,  through  all  the  prismatic  colors,  to  black. 

The  treatise  of  1810  consists,  first,  of  a  '  didactic  part,' 
in  which  he  set  forth  his  theory,  fortifying  it  with  an  im- 
mense number  of  observations  which  he  had  been  making 
during  a  period  of  some  twenty  years.  Aside  from  the 
fact  that  his  prisms  did  not  give  him  a  pure  spectrum 
the  fundamental  accuracy  of  these  observations  has  not 
been  called  in  question.  Then  follows  a  '  polemic  part,' 
in  which  he  hammers  away  industriously  and  often 
vehemently  at  the  Newtonian  hypothesis,  which  he  re- 
garded as  the  fountain-head  of  all  error.  Gradually  he 
came  to  think  of  himself  as  a  valiant  knight  besieging 
a  rickety  old  castle  which  a  deluded  world  still  persisted 
in  thinking  of  as  a  habitable  edifice.  Finally,  there  is  a 
*  historical  part,*  in  which  he  writes  the  history  of  specu- 
lation with  regard  to  the  nature  of  color.  This  is  today 
the  most  useful  and  interesting  portion  of  the  treatise. 
Its  breadth  of  view,  its  clearness  of  exposition,  its  honest 
praise  of  honest  effort,  its  interspersed  reflections  on  the 
progress  of  knowledge — all  this  is  beyond  praise. 

With  the  '  Theory  of  Color '  off  his  hands  Goethe  next 
turned  his  attention  to  the  autobiography  known  as 
'  From  my  Life.  Poetry  and  Truth.'  This  was  his  chief 
occupation  during  the  turbulent  epoch  of  Europe's  final 
grapple  with  Napoleon.  The  great  events  of  18 12  and 
18 1 3  hardly  disturbed  the  quiet  tenor  of  his  way.    Like 


142  GOETHE 

the  author  of  '  Peter  Schlemihl/  only  for  a  different 
reason,  he  felt  that  the  time  had  no  sword  for  him.  In 
the  first  place,  the  sword  was  not  his  affair.  He  hated 
war,  hated  the  fierce  passions  begotten  of  war;  and  he  had 
no  inspiring  vision  of  a  countervailing  good  that  was  to 
come  from  the  frenzied  conflict.  He  believed  that  Napo- 
leon was  too  strong  to  be  overthrown;  that  it  were  better 
for  the  present  to  make  the  best  of  the  ineluctable.  It  is 
often  said  by  modern  German  writers  that  his  great 
mistake  was  in  underestimating  the  power  of  an  aroused 
German  patriotism.  But  did  he  err  so  egregiously? 
Could  German  patriotism  have  won  the  Battle  of  Leipsic 
without  the  aid  of  Russia?  And  what  would  have  hap- 
pened to  German  patriotism  at  Waterloo  had  it  not  been 
for  the  British  troops  under  Wellington  ? 

For  later  generations  the  seeming  apathy  of  Goethe 
during  the  so-called  wars  of  liberation  has  been  the  sub- 
ject of  much  controversy.  The  best  men  of  that  time, 
however,  even  those  who  were  themselves  in  the  thick 
of  the  fight,  found  nothing  to  criticize.  It  seemed  to 
them  that  in  quietly  attending  to  the  work  which  was 
his  in  virtue  of  his  genius,  the  work  which  no  one  else 
could  do,  he  was  making  the  best  contribution  that  he 
could  make  to  the  cause  of  the  higher  German  patriotism. 
Thus  Arndt,  an  indefatigable  fighter,  wrote  of  him  in 
1814,  speaking  of  those  who  had  deserved  well  of  their 
country  in  the  then  recent  struggle,  that  '  one  towered  so 
high  that  he  stands  as  a  divine  miracle.  This  is  Goethe, 
the  poet,  not  born  of  time,  but  on  the  one  hand  a  symbol 
of  the  German  past,  and  on  the  other  a  symbol  of  its 
future.'  In  a  similar  vein  Schelling  wrote  reminiscently 
that  '  Germany  was  not  orphaned,  not  impoverished,  but 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS       143 

spiritually  great  in  all  its  weakness  and  disintegration, 
so  long  as  Goethe  lived.' 

And  after  all  he  was  less  indifferent  than  he  seemed. 
While  assigned  by  fate  and  temperament  to  the  role  of  a 
passive  onlooker,  he  shared  the  aspirations  of  the  age  and 
hoped  that  its  trials  might  prove  the  birth-pains  of  a 
better  time  to  come.  Strangely  enough  he  even  had  his 
moods  in  which  he,  of  all  men  in  the  world,  succumbed 
to  the  jingo  illusion  according  to  which  the  citizen  of 
a  small  and  wxak  state  is  to  be  commiserated.  This  ap- 
pears from  an  oft-quoted  conversation  with  Professor 
Luden,  who  reports  him  as  saying  in  1813: 

A  comparison  of  the  German  people,  politically  so  decadent 
and  helpless,  with  other  peoples  excites  painful  emotions  which 
I  try  to  surmount  in  every  possible  way,  and  in  science  and 
art  I  have  found  the  wings  by  which  I  am  able  to  rise  above 
them;  for  science  and  art  belong  to  the  world  and  national 
boundaries  vanish  before  them.  But  the  consolation  they 
afford  is  after  all  a  sorry  comfort  and  does  not  make  up  for 
the  proud  consciousness  of  belonging  to  a  great  and  strong 
nation  that  is  feared  and  respected.  In  this  way  there  is  con- 
solation in  the  very  thought  of  the  German  future.  I  cling  to 
it  as  strongly  as  do  you.  Yes,  the  German  people  promises  a 
future,  has  a  future.  The  destiny  of  the  Germans  is  not  yet 
fulfilled. 


The  first  three  parts  of  *  Poetry  and  Truth,'  each  com- 
prising a  volume  in  five  '  books,'  were  pubHshed  respec- 
tively in  181 1,  181 2,  and  18 14;  the  fourth  part,  written 
desultorily  in  the  intervening  years,  not  until  1833.  The 
story  ends  with  the  year  1775,  and  no  doubt  many  a 
reader  has  wished  that  it  had  been  continued  farther. 
In  return  for  an  authentic  account  of  those  first  ten 
years  in  Weimar  one  could  cheerfully  accept  a  less  ex- 


144  GOETHE 

pansive  treatment,  here  and  there,  of  episodes  elaborated 
in  the  twenty  books  that  the  world  knows.  It  should  in 
fairness  be  observed,  however,  that  the  title  does  not 
promise  and  that  Goethe  never  purposed  a  complete  and 
orderly  autobiography.  It  was  to  be  an  extract  '  from 
my  life '  and  to  consist  of  poetry  and  truth. 

The  *  poetry '  is  not  to  be  understood  as  in  any  sense 
synonymous  with  fiction  or  deliberate  invention.  For 
Goethe  poetry  was  not  the  antithesis  of  truth,  but  a 
higher  kind  of  truth — the  fact  as  seen  in  its  relations 
and  its  meaning.  He  thought  and  was  quite  right  in 
thinking  that  to  see  things  thus,  that  is,  to  select,  ignore, 
combine,  interpret,  distribute  the  emphasis  of  light  and 
shade,  was  to  use  the  creative  imagination,  in  other 
words,  to  '  poetize.'  He  once  said  to  Eckermann :  "  I 
called  the  book  '  Poetry  and  Truth,'  because,  in  virtue 
of  higher  tendencies,  it  rises  above  the  domain  of  low 
reality.  A  fact  of  our  life  has  not  value  because  it  is 
true,  but  because  it  is  significant."  That  all  the  multi- 
tudinous facts  narrated  in  '  Poetry  and  Truth  '  are  really 
'  significant '  in  any  one  definable  sense  would  be  too 
much  to  affirm :  something  must  be  pardoned  to  the  nat- 
ural discursiveness  of  an  elderly  story-teller  who  is  look- 
ing back  on  his  youth  through  the  romanticizing  haze  of 
time.  In  general,  however,  the  things  recorded  do  have 
their  '  meaning '  in  that  they  throw  light  on  the  character 
and  development  of  the  author.  '  Poetry  and  Truth  '  is 
the  natural  history  of  a  mind  as  shaped  by  heredity  and 
environment. 

It  is  the  first  book  of  its  kind  in  the  German  language 
— perhaps  one  should  say  in  any  language.  The  '  Con- 
fessions '  of  Augustine  and  of  Rousseau  are  fascinating 


MONARCH  OF  EUROPEAN  LETTERS       145 

self-revelations,  but  neither  gives  the  natural  history  of 
its  author's  mind.  Goethe  writes  as  serenely,  as  dispas- 
sionately, as  if  he  were  describing  the  life  of  some  curi- 
ous plant  or  animal.  It  is  not  an  apologia,  not  at  all  a 
riot  of  the  ego.  He  seems  to  be  calmly  scrutinizing  him- 
self under  the  microscope  and  candidly  telling  us  all  about 
the  phenomenon.  No  doubt  he  did  find  the  subject  in- 
teresting, but  why  should  he  not?  The  whole  age  was 
paying  him  boundless  homage.  In  advertising  him  to  the 
world  in  her  famous  book  of  181 3  as  le  plus  grand  poete 
de  V Allemagne  Madame  de  Stael  did  but  reflect,  as  in 
most  other  matters,  the  current  opinion.  How  had  it  all 
come  about?  On  what  meat  had  this  poetic  Caesar  fed 
that  he  had  grown  so  great  ?  Such  questions  clearly  de- 
served elucidation,  and  the  best  way  to  elucidate  them, 
at  least  for  one  who  held  that  the  poetic  process  at  its 
best  is  inexplicable  for  the  intellect,  was  to  tell  the  story 
of  his  youth,  that  the  world  might  know  what  manner  of 
man  he  had  been  and  how  his  early  works  had  originated. 
The  memoir  is  written  in  a  placidly  flowing  narrative 
which  shows  Goethe's  later  prose  style  at  its  very  best. 
This  applies  more  especially  to  the  first  three  parts ;  the 
fourth  part  exhibits  here  and  there  the  signs  of  a  waning 
spontaneity.  In  describing  his  distant  childhood  he  was 
able  to  profit  by  his  deceased  mother's  reminiscences  as 
imparted  to  her  deeply  interested  girl-friend  Bettina 
Brentano.  Bettina  came  to  Weimar  in  1807  at  the  age 
of  twenty-two,  well  prepared  to  become  Goethe's  adorer. 
She  told  him  what  his  mother  had  said  about  him,  and 
he  worked  it  into  '  Poetry  and  Truth,'  perhaps  not  en- 
tirely unaware  that  it  was  more  or  less  mixed  up  with 
the  fond  fancy-work  of  the  two  intermediaries.    For  his 


146  GOETHE 

student  life  at  Leipsic  he  had  his  own  early  letters  to 
the  home  circle.  After  that  there  were  but  few  of  his 
own  letters  that  had  come  back  into  his  hands  or  were 
anywise  accessible.  He  thus  had  to  rely  mainly  on  his 
memory,  and  his  memory  occasionally  played  him  false 
in  minor  matters  of  chronology.  He  had  not  the  modern 
Goetheforscher's  passion  for  exactitude  and  would  cer- 
tainly have  been  amused  could  he  have  foreseen  all  its 
operations.  Taken  all  in  all,  however,  the  tale  of  posi- 
tive error  in  '  Poetry  and  Truth '  is  neither  very  long 
nor  very  impressive. 

Finally,  what  most  distinguishes  ^  Poetry  and  Truth ' 
from  all  other  autobiographies  is  the  exceeding  frank- 
ness with  which  the  author  discourses  of  his  early  love- 
affairs.  A  procession  of  sweethearts — Gretchen,  An- 
nette, Friederike,  Lotte,  LiH,  besides  minor  flames  that 
receive  less  attention — saunter  through  his  pages,  irradi- 
ating them  with  a  mellow  light  of  romance.  As  a  matter 
of  sober  fact  there  was  nothing  highly  exceptional  in  the 
number  or  intensity  of  these  amatory  agitations  of  ado- 
lescence. They  belong  to  mother  Nature's  regimen  ever 
since  man  was  created  male  and  female.  What  is  excep- 
tional is  that  an  illustrious  man  of  sixty  should  have 
chosen  to  write  them  up  for  publication.  For  readers  of 
a  certain  temperament  this  violation  of  the  conventional 
reticence  has  always  been  a  stumbling-block.  But  let 
the  poet  be  accorded  his  rights.  He  had  set  out  to  write 
the  natural  history  of  his  mind,  and  his  youth  had  fallen 
in  a  curious  epoch  of  emotional  effusiveness.  How  could 
he  portray  the  epoch  so  well  as  by  telling  the  truth  poet- 
ically about  the  women  he  had  loved? 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SENEX  MIRABILIS 

Rarely  in  the  history  of  letters  does  old  age  present 
so  winsome  a  picture  as  in  the  case  of  Goethe.  That 
which  captivates  is  not  so  much  the  record  of  literary 
achievement,  notable  as  that  is,  but  the  eager  and  in- 
domitable spirit  that  informs  the  work,  and  the  moun- 
tain air  that  seems  to  invest  the  worker.  It  is  especially 
in  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life  that  he  deserves  the  title 
put  at  the  head  of  this  chapter. 

During  the  terrible  campaigns  of  1813  the  Wei- 
marians,  placed  between  two  fires,  had  been  fated  to  fight 
on  one  side  and  pray  on  the  other.  When  the  besom 
of  war  again  swept  over  the  Thuringian  land,  after  the 
Battle  of  the  Nations  had  shown  that  after  all  the  Corsi- 
can  was  not  invincible,  Goethe  bore  his  renewed  private 
afflictions  with  grim  stoicism.  In  due  time  came  the 
capture  of  Paris  by  the  allies.  When  the  news  reached 
Weimar  there  was  joyous  cannonading  which  lasted  all 
day  long.  Goethe's  diary  calmly  records  the  fact,  but  the 
language  betrays  no  beating  of  the  heart. 

It  was  a  perfectly  natural  tribute  to  the  foremost  poet 
of  the  nation,  but  an  error  of  judgment  nevertheless,  that 
just  he  should  have  been  asked  to  write  the  text  for  a 
musical  festive  play  to  be  given  in  Iffland's  theater  at 
Berlin  in  honor  of  the  home-coming  victors.  He  took 
the  matter  very  seriously,  as  we  can  see  from  his  letters, 

147 


148  GOETHE 

and  hoped  to  rise  to  the  occasion.  He  had  time  enough, 
too,  for  the  performance  had  to  be  postponed  until  the 
first  anniversary  of  the  capture  of  Paris.  But  the 
'  Awakening  of  Epimenides  '  was  not  a  great  popular 
success. 

Epimenides  is  intellectual  Germany.  At  the  rising  of 
the  curtain  the  Muse  introduces  him  in  pensive  ottava 
rima.  He  tells  in  pregnant  blank  verse  how  the  gods 
had  once  put  him  to  sleep  and  then,  on  his  waking  up, 
had  given  him  the  choice  between  seeing  the  Present  and 
seeing  the  Future.  He  chose  the  Present.  Now  appear 
a  band  of  genii  who  bid  him  sleep  again.  In  the  course 
of  his  long  slumber  there  is  a  symbolic  clash  of  armies, 
the  demons  of  War,  of  Cunning,  and  of  Subjugation 
operate  about  him  variously  with  song  and  dance,  and 
Faith  and  Love  take  part.  Finally  he  awakens  to  find 
that  the  old  order  has  all  passed  away.  What  he  sees 
about  him  seems  at  first  a  chaos  of  ruin;  but  he  now  has 
the  gift  of  seeing  the  Future,  and  what  he  sees  is  full  of 
promise.  He  apologizes  for  sleeping  so  long:  it  would 
have  been  better  to  suffer  with  the  fighters,  for  '  you  are 
greater  than  I  am.'  It  is  all  a  pretty  piece  of  symbolism, 
but  not  very  stirring  and  rather  too  finely  wrought — too 
literary — for  a  telling  lo  triumphe.  That  sort  of  thing 
was  not  in  Goethe's  line.  And  yet,  the  final  chorus  is  a 
splendid  burst  of  patriotic  feeling.  After  all,  the  note 
was  not  entirely  alien  to  his  lyre. 
^  After  Waterloo  the  Congress  of  Vienna  rewarded 
Karl  August  for  his  services;  for  he  had  broken  away 
from  Napoleon  as  soon  as  he  dared,  and  in  1814  had 
commanded  a  corps  in  the  Netherlands  for  the  Grand 
Alliance.    He  was  now  raised  to  the  rank  of  Grand  Duke 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  149 

and  given  considerable  new  territory.  But  even  during 
the  congress,  where  he  was  present  in  person,  he  aroused 
the  suspicion  of  the  princes  by  his  liberal  views.  He  pro- 
tested against  the  restriction  of  debate  to  the  rights 
of  rulers  and  pleaded  for  some  attention  to  the  rights  of 
the  people.  As  Grand  Duke  he  at  once  gave  his  little 
realm  a  liberal  constitution — the  first  German  prince  to 
scent  the  morning  air  of  constitutionalism.  Freedom  of 
the  press  was  decreed  and  new  opposition  journals  at 
once  began  to  make  trouble.  There  ensued  a  period  in 
which  Weimar,  now  the  acknowledged  '  mother  of  arts 
and  eloquence  '  in  Germany,  became  hardly  less  renowned 
as  a  nursery  of  political  liberaHsm. 

All  this  was  not  much  to  Goethe's  liking.  That  gov- 
ernment should  aim  at  the  welfare  of  all  the  people, 
rather  than  at  the  power,  comfort,  and  convenience  of 
a  ruling  class,  is  a  maxim  which  he  would  have  accepted 
heartily.  But  he  had  no  faith  in  majorities,  or  in  the 
machinery  of  constitutionalism,  or  in  the  shibboleths  of 
democracy.  It  is  quite  wrong  to  think  of  him  as  nar- 
rowly bent  on  his  own  ease  and  temperamentally  opposed 
to  whatever  might  disturb  it.  He  simply  felt  that  the 
business  of  governing  was  a  vocation  for  the  expert; 
a  matter  of  devotion-,  wisdom,  and  humane  idealism.  He 
himself  was  a  tireless  worker.  He  hated  the  oppressive 
Metternich  regime,  but  on  the  other  hand  he  could  see 
no  hope  in  the  pow-wowing  and  voting  of  the  inexpert. 
To  quote  once  more  an  oft-quoted  saying  of  his : 

As  to  the  principle  of  preserving  that  which  is  and  forestall- 
ing revolution  I  agree  with  the  monarchists,  only  not  in  respect 
to  the  means  of  so  doing;  for  they  call  to  aid  stupidity  and 
darkness,  I  intelligence  and  light. 


I50  GOETHE 

He  was  made  chief  minister  under  the  new  regime, 
and  now  it  irked  him  that  his  expert  proposals  for  the 
good  of  the  land  were  to  be  subject  to  the  critical  scrutiny 
and  interpellation  of  any  casual  sausage-maker  whom  ad- 
miring constituents  might  send  up  to  represent  them. 

To  a  man  of  such  liberal-conservative  temper  the  year 
1817  must  have  been  particularly  trying.  It  was  the 
time  of  the  famous  Wartburg  festival.  As  the  third 
anniversary  of  the  Battle  of  Leipsic  and  the  three  hun- 
dredth of  the  posting  of  Luther's  theses  drew  near,  plans 
were  made  by  the  Jena  students  to  celebrate  both  jubilees 
together  at  the  Wartburg.  The  liberal  Grand  Duke 
readily  granted  the  use  of  the  castle  and  in  due  time 
some  five  hundred  students  came  together  to  demonstrate 
for  Protestantism,  Freedom,  and  the  Fatherland.  There 
were  speeches  and  hurrahings,  also  a  big  bonfire  in  which 
certain  reactionary  writings  were  consumed  with  fervent 
heat.  Any  government  not  hopelessly  benighted  would 
have  looked  on  the  whole  affair  as  a  harmless  if  not 
commendable  ebullition  of  young  ideaHsm,  but  that  was 
not  the  view  taken  of  it  in  Berlin  and  Vienna.  There  it 
was  regarded  first  with  suspicion,  then  with  alarm  as 
exaggerated  reports  magnified  it  into  a  treasonable  con- 
spiracy. Protests  began  to  rain  in  on  the  luckless  Grand 
Duke,  with  demands  for  repressive  action.  So  violent 
was  the  tempest  that  Goethe  shut  himself  up  from  so- 
ciety in  sheer  disgust. 

Had  common  sense  such  as  his  prevailed  at  that  time 
in  the  counsels  of  the  Confederation  Germany  might 
have  been  spared  some  disgraceful  pages  of  her  subse- 
quent history — those  that  deal  with  her  silly  fear  of  the 
students'  societies  and  her  witless  persecution  of  liberal- 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  151 

minded  professors.  But  the  Holy  Alliance  was  literally 
scared  out  of  its  wits.  The  murder  of  Kotzebue  in  18 19 
brought  matters  to  a  crisis.  A  central  commission  was 
created  to  smell  out  academic  '  demagogy.'  Prussian  and 
Russian  students  were  forbidden  to  go  to  Jena  and  a 
strict  censorship  of  the  press  was  established. 

All  this  came  close  to  Goethe,  since  he  had  long  de- 
tested Kotzebue  even  while  humoring  the  popular  taste 
by  giving  his  plays  rather  frequently  on  the  Weimar 
stage.  In  181 7  Kotzebue  had  returned  to  Weimar  as  a 
high-salaried  Russian  agent  and  had  begun  the  publica- 
tion of  his  reactionary  Wochenhlatt,  which  was  the  more 
immediate  cause  of  the  hostility  that  led  to  his  death. 
Left  alone  he  would  have  secured  no  following  and  done 
no  harm;  murdered  by  a  fanatic  of  liberalism  he  was 
worth  a  mine  of  gold  to  the  reactionaries.  Thus  Goethe 
may  well  have  felt  with  the  distracted  Tybalt :  '  A  plague 
on  both  your  houses ! ' 

In  the  year  18 17,  too,  that  long  and  laborious  director- 
ship of  the  Weimar  theater  came  to  its  inglorious  end. 
The  trouble  grew  out  of  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
whether  the  Temple  of  the  Muses  would  or  would  not 
be  permanently  desecrated  by  the  appearance  on  its 
sacred  boards  of  an  itinerant  showman  with  a  trained 
dog.  There  was  certainly  need  of  some  philosophy.  On 
the  one  hand,  the  director,  as  author  of  *  Faust,'  was 
on  record  to  the  effect  that  '  even  a  wise  man  is  fond  of 
a  well-trained  dog ' ;  and  yet  he  was  now  opposed  to  the 
dog.  On  the  other  hand,  the  sovran  ruler  of  the  land, 
liberal  here  too,  and  instigated  by  a  mistress  who  liked 
to  make  trouble  for  Goethe,  could  see  no  harm  in  the 
dog.     Result:  the  director  was  quietly  relieved  of  his 


152  GOETHE 

official  burden.  There  was  a  slight  and  brief  estrange- 
ment between  the  two  men,  but  they  soon  forgot  it  and 
remained  the  best  of  friends  until  the  death  of  Karl  Au- 
gust in  1828.  For  Goethe  the  rehef  from  theatrical  cares 
came  none  too  soon.  He  had  long  since  done  his  work 
in  that  field  and  it  was  becoming  increasingly  difficult  for 
him  to  hold  up  his  private  banner  of  the  ideal  in  com- 
petition with  the  far  better  equipment  of  the  larger  cities. 

At  this  point  a  few  words  may  fitly  be  devoted  to  some 
of  the  other  personal  relations  that  threw  their  lights 
and  shadows  over  the  afternoon  of  Goethe's  life.  With 
Wieland,  who  died  in  18 13,  he  remained  on  a  cordial 
footing  to  the  end,  and  his  noble  obituary  tribute  is  a 
classic  of  its  kind.  With  Herder  it  was  different.  The 
aging  Herder  had  no  sympathy  with  his  friend's  pagan- 
ism, so  that  the  intimacy  of  the  'eighties  gradually  cooled 
off.  The  consequence  was  that  Herder's  death  in  1803 
left  no  void  in  Goethe's  life.  When  he  came  to  write 
of  him  in  '  Poetry  and  Truth '  his  pen  was  guided  alto- 
gether by  the  critical  intellect. 

The  two  most  intimate  friends  of  his  later  years,  those 
to  whom  he  gave  his  confidence  most  freely,  always  ad- 
dressing them  with  the  familiar  du,  were  the  Berlin 
composer,  Zelter,  and  the  faithful  Knebel.  Of  the  orig- 
inal Weimar  group  Knebel  alone  survived  him.  Among 
his  numerous  scientific  and  literary  correspondents  the 
brothers  Wilhelm  and  Alexander  von  Humboldt  were 
probably  worth  most  to  him  in  the  long  run.  Beginning 
in  1796  he  gradually  resumed  neighborly  relations  with 
Charlotte  von  Stein  and  continued  to  write  to  her  occa- 
sionally until  her  death  in  1827. 

Of  the  younger  generation  of  writers,  the  so-called 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  I53 

Romanticists,  only  Tieck  and  Schelling  continued  to 
enjoy  his  lasting  friendship.  Originally  the  Schlegel 
brothers  were  his  fervid  apostles  and  his  relations  with 
them  were  cordial.  He  even  put  their  vacuous  plays  on 
the  Weimar  stage.  Then  Friedrich  turned  against  him, 
becoming  a  high  priest  of  the  Nazarenism  which  Goethe 
detested,  and  finally  going  over  to  the  Church  of  Rome. 
This  step  Goethe  referred  to  as  an  attempt  to  '  smuggle 
the  Devil  and  his  grandmother  and  all  their  malodorous 
train  back  into  good  society.'  Of  the  elder  brother  too 
he  gradually  lost  much  of  his  good  opinion,  but  without 
a  complete  rupture  of  intercourse. 

As  we  have  seen,  he  was  for  a  while  very  cordial  to 
Zacharias  Werner,  but  when  Werner  became  a  Catholic 
priest  there  was  an  end  of  all  friendly  relations.  He  re- 
sponded in  a  genial  fatherly  way  to  Bettina  Brentano's 
worshipful  attentions,  but  his  few  authentic  letters  to 
her,  written  between  1808  and  181 1,  give  no  hint  of 
any  such  ardor  of  feeling  as  is  imputed  to  him  in  her 
famous  book  '  Goethe's  Correspondence  with  a  Child.' 

As  for  the  literary  work  of  the  Romanticists  he  for 
the  most  part  disliked  it,  especially  their  unplayable 
dramas.  He  could  not  abide  their  cult  of  formlessness. 
He  quite  failed  to  divine  the  genius  of  Heinrich  von 
Kleist,  and  ruined  the  '  Broken  Jug '  by  an  unfortunate 
arrangement  for  the  stage.  As  the  later  Romanticists 
went  in  more  and  more  for  the  gruesome  and  the  un- 
canny he  came  to  feel  that  the  Romantic  was  just  a  syn- 
onym for  the  morbid.  But  first  and  last  he  learned  a 
great  deal  from  them,  as  we  see  from  the  Second  Part 
of  '  Faust.' 

But  while  he  remained  intellectually  a  Protestant  his 


154  GOETHE 

feeling  for  the  medieval  church  and  its  votaries  under- 
went a  great  change  in  his  later  years.  In  the  summer 
of  1814  he  paid  a  visit  to  his  birthplace,  v^hich  he  had 
not  seen  since  1797.  He  had  long  cherished  the  wish 
to  feast  his  eyes  once  more  on  the  old  familiar  scenes, 
but  each  year  the  pull  of  Karlsbad  proved  the  stronger. 
Even  the  death  of  his  mother  in  1808  and  the  settlement 
of  her  estate  had  not  drawn  him  back  to  the  old  home. 
Thus  the  visit  of  18 14  was  a  memorable  event.  Wies- 
baden agreed  with  him,  he  was  in  buoyant  health,  the 
Rhineland  spoke  to  him  with  familiar  voices  at  every 
turn,  and  a  large  circle  of  friends  were  lavish  of  hos- 
pitality.    His  letters  show  that  he  was  very  happy. 

It  was  on  this  tour  that  he  made  his  pilgrimage  to  the 
chapel  of  St.  Rochus  at  Bingen.  The  church  had  fared 
badly  during  the  war  and  now  they  were  going  to  re- 
dedicate  it  and  restore  its  wonder-working  saint  to  his 
former  glory.  Goethe  attended  the  festival,  along  with 
many  thousands  of  the  faithful,  was  deeply  impressed 
by  what  he  saw,  and  proceeded  to  write  a  very  sympa- 
thetic description  of  it.  More  than  that,  he  sketched 
a  picture  of  the  saint,  had  his  sketch  drawn  in  crayon  by 
Meyer,  and  this  in  turn  painted  in  oil  by  Luise  Seidel. 
In  due  time  he  presented  the  painting  to  the  church.  A 
startling  new  role  this  for  the  '  old  heathen ! ' 

A  little  later  he  spent  two  delightful  weeks  at  Heidel- 
berg as  the  guest  of  Sulpiz  Boisseree,  a  Catholic  art-lover 
who  was  just  then  full  of  plans  for  completing  the 
Cologne  cathedral.  Boisseree,  who  had  gathered  a  fine 
collection  of  Lowland  art,  now  set  about  winning  Goethe 
over  to  a  more  sympathetic  attitude  toward  early  Chris- 
tian painting.     And   he   was  quite   largely  successful. 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  i55 

When  he  got  back  home  Goethe  wrote  to  Knebel  that  he 
was  learning  to  be  more  tolerant  of  individuals.  Never- 
theless he  still  preferred  Homer. 

By  this  time  he  was  deep  in  the  study  of  Persian  poetry, 
which  he  had  begun  in  1812  in  Hammer-Purgstall's 
translation  of  the  '  Diwan '  of  Hafiz.  Here  he  found  a 
poetic  brother  with  whom  he  could  clasp  hands  across  the 
abyss  of  time  and  space.  He  began  to  make  himself  at 
home  in  this  new  world  of  thought,  feeling,  and  expres- 
sion and  found  it  very  fascinating.  On  the  scholarly 
side  he  took  the  matter  very  seriously,  learned  a  little 
Persian  and  some  Arabic,  and  soon  amassed  considerable 
Oriental  learning,  which  was  in  due  time  utilized  for  the 
notes  and  excursuses  of  the  *  Divan.' 

But  what  proved  most  diverting — an  excellent  refuge 
from  the  distresses  of  war  in  Europe — was  to  imagine 
himself  in  the  place  of  those  Persian  and  Arabic  con- 
freres; to  steal  their  apparatus,  so  to  speak,  and  put  it  to 
his  own  uses.  So  he  practised  thinking  in  terms  of  the 
tent,  the  turban,  and  the  camel, — the  rose  and  the  night- 
ingale were  familiar  already — and  ere  long  felt  quite  at 
ease  in  the  new  costume.  Presently  the  plan  took  shape 
in  his  mind  of  a  Western  *  Divan  '  to  match  that  of  Hafiz. 

Hardly  had  this  idea  germinated  when  there  swam 
into  his  ken  a  lady  who  was  peculiarly  fitted  to  play  Su- 
leika  to  his  Hatem,  as  he  now  took  to  calling  himself. 
This  was  Marianne  Willemer,  the  young  and  talented 
wife  of  an  elderly  Frankfort  gentleman.  The  Willemers 
had  been  prominent  among  the  friends  who  made  the 
summer  of  18 14  so  very  pleasant  that  he  was  glad  to 
repeat  the  visit  to  the  Rhineland  the  following  year. 
Frau  Willemer  could  sing  and  it  soon  turned  out  that 


I 

156  GOETHE 

she  could  also  write  verse  with  the  genuine  Sapphic  glow. 
She  too  quickly  acquired  the  Persian  apparatus,  and  then 
she  and  Goethe  began  to  be-poetize  each  other  like  a  pair 
of  Iranian  lovers.  It  was  good  sport,  with  enough  of 
real  feeling  to  give  it  a  spice  of  naughtiness — as  if  two 
kindred  Occidental  souls  had  eloped  together  to  the  land 
of  the  bulbul.  In  the  summer  and  fall  of  181 5  the  rimed 
missives  flew  to  and  fro  between  Hatem  and  Suleika, 
forming  a  cryptic  record  of  their  doings  and  agitations; 
to  some  extent  also  of  their  religious  differences,  for 
Suleika  too  was  a  Catholic. 

In  this  way  came  into  being  the  '  Book  Suleika,'  by 
far  the  best  of  the  twelve  books  published  in  18 19  under 
the  title  of  '  West-Eastern  Divan.'  Not  till  half  a  cen- 
tury later  did  it  become  known — the  discovery  was  made 
by  Herman  Grimm — that  a  number  of  the  poems  of 
the  collection,  including  some  of  the  very  best,  were  from 
the  pen  of  Marianne  Willemer. 

Taken  as  a  whole  the  '  Divan '  suggests  a  poetic  In- 
dian summer.  The  glow  of  feeling  is  replaced  by  the 
mellow  radiance  of  reflection — reflection,  too,  on  far- 
away matters  suggested  by  reading.  The  appeal  is  not 
to  the  universal  human  heart,  but  to  the  imagination  of 
a  select  few.  The  poems  do  not  seem  to  well  up  from 
the  deep  springs  of  communal  feeling,  but  are  piped  in, 
so  to  speak,  from  a  distant  land  to  which  the  writer  has 
fled,  like  any  Romanticist,  for  a  refuge  from  the  here 
and  now.  This,  however,  is  far  from  saying  that  they 
are  artificial  or  were  not  truly  felt  at  the  time.  The 
German  adjective  that  best  hits  their  pervading  quality 
is  sinnig.  Goethe  is  here  a  traveler  on  a  foreign  beach, 
picking  up  curious  shells  and  comparing  them  with  those 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  i57 

of  the  homeland.  In  short,  the  poems  of  the  '  Divan ' 
are  the  souvenirs  of  an  excursionist,  the  by-products  of 
an  intellectual  conquest;  and  such  things  gradually  lose 
their  power  over  the  emotions.  Hence  it  was  that  he 
could  say  to  Eckermann  in  1827 — there  is  no  reason  to 
doubt  the  accuracy  of  the  report — : 

I  noticed  this  evening  that  the  songs  of  the  '  Divan '  no 
longer  concern  me  in  any  way.  Both  the  critical  and  the  pas- 
sionate element  have  ceased  to  live  in  me — left  lying  by  the 
wayside,  like  the  cast-off  skin  of  a  snake. 

Between  1815  and  1819  a  second  edition  of  Goethe's 
works,  this  time  in  twenty  volumes,  came  from  the  press 
of  Cotta,  bringing  to  their  author  the  sum  of  16,000 
talers — a  very  handsome  revenue,  considering  that  the 
copyright  was  to  extend  only  to  the  year  1823.  The 
new  edition  contained  an  additional  volume  of  short 
poems,  the  most  of  which  had  not  been  published  be- 
fore, but  nothing  further  of  '  Faust,'  of  '  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter,'  or  of  the  autobiography.  By  this  time  '  Poetry  and 
Truth '  had  receded  into  the  background  of  his  interest 
and  all  thought  of  carrying  the  story  beyond  the  year 
1775  had  been  definitely  given  up. 

But  he  knew  very  well  that  his  subsequent  career  would 
be  of  great  interest  to  the  public  and  to  posterity  and 
he  felt  a  certain  obligation  to  complete  the  record  as  best 
he  might.  What  he  could  do  and  did  was  to  write  an 
authentic  account  of  important  episodes  here  and  there, 
such  as  the  Swiss  tours  of  1775  and  1797,  the  sojourn 
in  Italy  in  1786- 1788,  the  campaign  in  France  and  the 
siege  of  Mainz  in  1792- 1793,  and  the  visit  to  the  Rhine 
region  in  .1814.    Besides  these  he  wrote  a  sort  of  skeleton 


158  GOETHE 

retrospect — a  bare  record  of  fact — which  he  at  first 
called  '  Annals '  and  afterwards  by  the  untranslatable 
name  of  Tag-  und  Jahreshefte.  These  end  with  the  year 
1822. 

In  order  to  have  a  convenient  medium  of  publication 
for  his  reminiscences  and  his  opinions  of  men,  books, 
and  works  of  art,  as  well  as  for  occasional  poems,  he 
started  in  18 16  a  journal  called  Kunst  und  Alterthum. 
The  first  two  numbers  were  mainly  taken  up  with  what 
he  had  lately  seen  in  the  Rhineland,  including  the  St. 
Rochus  festival.  Succeeding  numbers  appeared  at  irreg- 
ular intervals  until  1832,  the  last  volume  having  been 
brought  out  by  friends  after  Goethe's  death.  The  vol- 
umes contain  an  amazing  variety  of  matter  and  are  es- 
pecially valuable  for  their  reviews  and  appreciations. 

And  then  there  was  also  the  field  of  science,  in  which 
the  indefatigable  worker  felt  that  he  had  much  to  say. 
To  meet  this  need  he  began  to  issue  the  publications 
called  Zur  Naturwissenschaft  iiberhaupt  and  Zur  Mor- 
phologic. Both  began  in  18 17  and  ran  until  1824,  each 
finally  comprising  two  volumes  of  scientific  miscellanies 
in  the  fields  of  botany,  comparative  anatomy,  geology, 
mineralogy,  optics,  and  zoology. 

Amid  all  these  austerities  of  strenuous  toil  the  aging 
poet  remained,  as  of  yore,  highly  susceptible  to  the  spell 
of  the  '  eternal  womanly.'  In  the  summer  of  1821,  while 
taking  the  waters  as  usual  at  Karlsbad,  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  a  young  girl  of  fifteen,  Ulrike  von 
Levetzow,  whose  mother  he  had  already  known  for  sev- 
eral years.  The  following  summer  he  saw  much  of  the 
Levetzows — there  were  three  sisters  in  all — and  was 
captivated  by  the  demure  girlish  charm  of  Ulrike,  who 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  i59 

had  lately  come  from  school  and  had  never  read  a  line 
of  him  at  the  time  of  her  first  introduction  to  His  Ex- 
cellency the  Minister.  He  came  to  the  point  of  making 
her  an  offer  of  marriage — not  directly  but  by  the  Grand 
Duke  as  intermediary.  But  Ulrike  declined  on  the 
ground  that  she  might  prove  a  disturbing  element  in 
His  Excellency's  household.  For  Frau  Christiane  was 
now  dead,  and  August  von  Goethe,  the  poet's  energetic 
and  capable  but  somewhat  bibulous  son,  had  married  an 
aristocratic  court  lady,  Ottilie  von  Pogwisch,  who  was 
now  the  mistress  of  the  house.  There  were  also  two 
grandsons,  Walter  and  Wolfgang,  whose  tragi-comic  fate 
it  was  to  be  to  pass  rather  glumly  through  life  under 
the  shadow  of  their  grandfather's  great  name.  No  won- 
der that  Ulrike,  whose  heart  had  not  been  touched  in  the 
least  by  her  elderly  wooer,  was  shy  of  becoming  his  wife. 
Having  now  to  practise  his  favorite  virtue  of  renuncia- 
tion, Goethe  rose  to  the  occasion  and  expressed  himself 
in  the  splendid  *  Marienbad  Elegy,'  which  he  copied 
carefully  with  his  own  hand  in  Roman  script  and  pre- 
served in  a  red  morocco  cover  tied  with  a  silk  ribbon. 

We  come  now  to  that  singular  production  in  which  a 
lax  literary  conscience,  combined  with  the  exigency  of 
Cotta's  printing-house,  made  perennial  trouble  for 
Goethe's  admirers.  When  he  finally  returned,  in  1820,  to 
the  long-neglected  '  Wilhelm  Meister '  he  had  on  hand 
half  a  dozen  or  more  short  stories,  of  which  some  had 
already  been  published  wholly  or  in  part.  These  tales 
had  no  connection  with  one  another  and  no  common 
character.  Originally,  to  be  sure,  it  had  been  intended 
that  they  should  all  bear  somehow  on  the  subject  of  re- 
nunciation, which  was  to  be  the  central  ^nd  unifying 


i6o  GOETHE 

idea  of  the  entire  narrative.  But  as  time  passed  new 
stories  had  been  written  with  little  or  no  regard  to  the 
central  theme,  and  now  all  these  were  somehow  to  be 
woven  together  and  at  the  same  time  interwoven  with  the 
tissue  of  a  didactic  romance  relating  to  Wilhelm  Meister 
and  his  friends. 

As  for  Wilhelm  himself,  he  had  been  thought  of  as 
a  wandering  member  of  a  sort  of  League  for  Mutual 
Improvement.  He  was  to  go  about  with  his  son  Felix, 
making  new  acquaintances,  getting  new  ideas,  and  occa- 
sionally writing  to  his  friends,  hearing  from  them  by 
letter,  or  meeting  them  in  unexpected  places.  Never 
was  he  to  spend  more  than  three  days  under  one  roof, 
never  to  halt  at  a  distance  of  less  than  a  league  from  his 
last  place  of  shelter.     A  passage  in  his  first  letter  runs : 

My  life  is  to  be  a  wandering.  I  have  singular  duties  of  the 
wanderer  to  perform,  pecuHar  trials  to  undergo.  How  I  smile, 
oftentimes,  when  I  read  over  the  conditions  imposed  on  me  by 
the  League  and  by  myself.  Many  of  them  are  being  observed, 
many  violated;  but  in  the  act  of  violating  them  this  sheet  of 
paper,  this  evidence  of  my  last  confession  and  absolution, 
serves  me  in  place  of  a  commanding  conscience  and  I  return 
to  the  track.  I  am  careful  and  my  mistakes  no  longer  tumble 
over  one  another  like  the  waters  of  a  mountain  stream. 

Now  it  is  clear,  and  must  have  been  clear  to  Goethe 
from  the  outset,  that  such  a  peripatetic  scheme  of  life — 
without  a  vocation,  with  no  fixed  ties  save  those  of  mem- 
ory, with  no  responsibilities  save  those  of  a  father  with 
a  son  to  educate — might  be  well  enough  adapted  to  in- 
culcate the  one  virtue  of  renunciation,  but  would  inev- 
itably blight  every  other  virtue  and  lead  to  nothing  but 
a  narrow,  self -centered,  intellectual  hedonism.     So  Wil- 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  i6i 

helm,  who  by  the  nature  of  his  being  could  learn  noth- 
ing except  by  experience,  was  to  find  out  that  man  is  a 
social  being.  Just  as  his  apprenticeship  had  taught  him 
that  a  vocation  is  needed  for  the  sake  of  its  effect  on  the 
individual,  so  he  was  to  learn  from  his  wanderings  that 
there  is  no  perfection  of  the  individual  save  in  the  at- 
mosphere of  social  thought  and  action.  He  was  to  learn 
the  philosophy  of  work  in  its  larger  bearings.  But  this  is 
really  a  very  simple  matter — the  abc  of  our  modern 
way  of  thinking — and  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  could 
possibly  be  brought  home  effectively  by  any  scheme  of 
wandering;  brought  home,  that  is,  to  a  hero  of  romance. 
It  would  seem  that  Goethe  had  come  to  feel  that  there 
was  something  not  quite  right  with  his  philosophy  of 
individual  culture;  but  at  the  age  of  seventy,  prior  to  his 
reading  in  the  nascent  literature  of  socialism,  he  prob- 
ably felt  that  he  had  no  new  message  to  deliver. 

Meanwhile  something  had  to  be  done.  There  were 
those  stories,  there  was  the  old  scheme  of  the  '  renunci- 
ants '  as  a  sub-title  for  the  whole  book,  and  there  was  a 
beginning  actually  in  print.  With  a  little  more  work  a 
volume  would  be  in  sight  for  Cotta.  So  he  did  what  he 
had  sometimes  done  before:  he  set  the  printer  at  work 
without  knowing  where  he  was  going  to  come  out,  and 
trusting  to  the  future  to  clear  the  way.  The  first  part 
of  the  'Wanderings'  came  out  in  1821.  Of  course  no 
one  understood  it,  although  a  few  friends  praised  the 
volume  on  account  of  the  pretty  stories  and  the  bits  of 
interspersed  Goethean  wisdom. 

And  then  came  something  new.  In  1822  appeared 
Fourier's  Traitc  de  ['association  agricole  domestiqiie, 
supplementing   his   earlier   work   on   the   '  four   move- 


i62  GOETHE 

ments/  which  was  now  beginning  to  attract  considerable 
attention.  The  same  year  brought  forth  St.  Simon's 
Du  systeme  industriel,  which  was  followed  in  1824  and 
1825  by  his  Catechisme  des  industriels  and  Nouveau 
Christianisme.  About  this  time  also  Robert  Owen's  so- 
cialistic experiments  in  Scotland  and  in  Indiana  were  at- 
tracting attention  and  the  Westminster  Review  was 
founded  to  exploit  Bentham's  utilitarianism.  All  these 
phenomena  and  others  in  the  new  line  of  socialistic  think- 
ing interested  Goethe  and  he  began  to  feel  that  he  had 
builded  better  than  he  knew  in  putting  off  the  completion 
of  the  '  Wanderings.' 

Dissatisfied  with  the  first  part  as  already  printed,  he 
decided  to  break  it  up  and  fill  in  the  interstices  with  new 
matter.  By  this  time  he  was  occupied,  with  the  assistance 
of  his  secretary  Eckermann,  with  the  final  edition  of  his 
works — the  famous  Ausgahe  letzter  Hand.  Looking 
ahead  he  calculated  that  the  *  Wanderings '  would  fill 
about  three  volumes  of  the  proper  size.  But  when  it 
came  to  the  test  of  the  printing-ofhce  the  third  volume 
proved  too  thin.  So  he  turned  over  to  Eckermann  a 
packet  of  manuscript  containing  miscellaneous  reflections 
and  instructed  him  to  use  as  much  of  it  as  might  be 
necessary.  The  matter  was  quite  irrelevant,  but  no  more 
so  than  some  of  the  stories  and  other  chips  from  his 
workshop  which  had  already  found  a  place  in  the  medley 
of  the  '  Wanderings.'  When  the  last  of  the  three  vol- 
umes, thus  unconscionably  padded,  appeared  in  print  in 
1829  the  perpetrator  remarked  cheerfully  that  in  a  future 
edition  Eckermann  might  remove  some  of  the  irrelevant 
matter. 

It  is  patent  that  a  book  which  came  into  being  in  such 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  163 

fashion  has  no  standing  in  the  court  of  literary  art.    The 

*  Wanderings  '  is  really  not  a  work  of  art  at  all  but  a  col- 
lection of  miscellanies.  The  same  might  be  said,  how- 
ever, of  the  bible.  With  all  its  sins  upon  its  head  Goethe's 
last  contribution  to  prose  fiction  is  precious  as  a  record 
of  his  thinking  on  social  reform,  religion,  and  education. 

All  that  remains  now  is  to  consider  the  culminating 
achievement    of    Goethe's    old    age — the    finishing    of 

*  Faust.'  And  here  there  is  a  very  different  story  to  tell : 
no  compromise  with  the  poetic  conscience,  no  declining 
to  the  lower  levels  of  space-filling,  but  clear,  steady  work 
and  triumphant  devotion  to  the  supreme  end  of  rounding 
out  his  great  life-work  to  artistic  completeness. 

Back  in  the  year  1816,  a  new  edition  of  his  complete 
works  being  then  in  prospect,  Goethe  had  for  a  moment 
dallied  with  the  thought  of  continuing  *  Faust.'     The 

*  hovering  forms  '  had  again  approached  him  with  their 
mute  appeal,  as  before  in  1797.  But  he  soon  put  them 
off;  the  time  was  not  yet  ripe.  He  went  so  far,  however, 
as  to  write  out  a  prose  sketch  of  the  proposed  continua- 
tion, setting  down  the  details  as  they  had  lain  in  his  mind 
for  some  forty  years.  The  sketch  was  not  published  at 
the  time  but  came  to  light  after  the  opening  of  the  Goethe 
house  in  1885.  It  shows  that  from  the  first  great  im- 
portance had  been  attached  to  the  legendary  episode  of 
Faust's  marriage  to  Helena.  The  strangely  matched  pair 
had  been  thought  of  as  dwelling  in  a  castle  on  the  Rhine. 
Helena  was  to  wear  a  magic  ring  on  which  her  corporeal 
existence  on  earth  would  depend.  Her  wonderful  son 
Euphorion  had  been  imagined  as  a  wilful,  capricious 
child  who  would  get  into  trouble  with  some  soldiers  and 
lose  his  life.    The  grief -stricken  mother  would  then  acci- 


i64  GOETHE 

dentally  pull  off  her  ring,  and  this  would  be  the  signal 
of  her  return  to  the  under-world.  After  this  the  details, 
as  given  in  the  prose  scheme  of  1816,  are  somewhat 
vague.     It  ends  as  follows : 

Mephistopheles,  who  has  seen  all  this  in  the  capacity  of  an 
old  stewardess,  tries  to  comfort  Faust  by  directing  his  atten- 
tion to  the  charms  of  wealth  and  power.  The  owner  of  the 
castle  has  been  killed  in  Palestine  and  greedy  monks  try  to 
get  possession  of  the  place.  Faust  fights  with  them,  aided  by 
three  mighty  men  whom  Mephistopheles  gives  him  as  allies, 
comes  off  victorious,  avenges  the  death  of  his  son,  and  wins 
a  great  estate.  Meanwhile  he  grows  old,  and  what  happens  to 
him  later  will  appear  when  we  assemble  at  some  future  time 
the  fragments,  or  rather  the  sporadic  passages  of  the  Second 
Part  which  have  already  been  worked  out,  and  thus  rescue 
some  things  that  will  be  of  interest  to  the  reader. 

The  assembling  here  promised  was  destined  to  wait 
about  nine  years  longer.  Actual  work  on  the  Second 
Part  began  in  the  spring  of  1825.  At  that  time  Goethe's 
thoughts  were  much  occupied  with  Lord  Byron,  who 
had  met  his  death  at  Missolonghi  the  preceding  year. 
He  had  long  admired  Byron  for  the  power  of  his  verse, 
and  the  famous  Englishman  had  written  him  several  let- 
ters and  had  promised,  on  his  return  from  Greece,  to  pay 
a  visit  to  the  '  undisputed  sovereign  of  European  liter- 
ature.* In  Byron  he  saw  a  shining  example  of  splendid 
genius  rushing  to  ruin  for  the  sake  of  a  dazzling  dream. 
Then  too  he  had  himself  lately  lived  through  a  thrilling 
epoch  in  which  he  had  seen  German  youth  go  mad  with 
patriotic  passion.  Thinking  of  all  this  and  reading  books 
about  modern  Greece,  which  was  just  then  the  object  of 
admiring  sympathy  among  Philhellenes  in  all  the  West- 
ern world,  he  presently  got  a  new  vision  of  the  old  epi- 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  165 

sode  of  Faust's  marriage  to  Helena.  He  would  trans- 
fer the  scene  from  the  castle  on  the  Rhine  to  Arcadia, 
where  Faust  should  rule  for  a  brief  season  over  the 
fabled  land  of  poesy  with  the  Queen  of  Beauty  for  a 
consort.  Their  union  should  symbolize  the  Germanic 
conquest  of  classic  soil,  the  relation  of  a  feudal  lord  to 
his  vassals,  the  devotion  of  a  medieval  knight  to  his 
liege  lady.  And  Euphorion,  the  offspring  of  their  union, 
should  be  an  earth-spurning  Genius  of  Poesy,  becoming 
intoxicated  at  last  with  martial  frenzy  and  ending  his 
career  in  a  sublimely  quixotic  attempt  to  fly. 

On  these  lines,  with  superb  imaginative  daring  and 
a  marvelous  wealth  of  symbolic  suggestion,  the  episode 
was  worked  out  in  the  course  of  the  next  two  years  into 
a  '  Classico-Romantic  Phantasmagory,'  which  was  pub- 
lished separately  in  1827  with  the  sub-title  *  Interlude  to 
Faust.'  The  next  year  it  was  reviewed  with  keen  pene- 
tration and  some  quite  natural  perplexity  by  Thomas 
Carlyle,  who  had  now  become  an  occasional  correspon- 
dent of  Goethe,  having  found  in  him  his  guiding  star 
in  a  naughty  world. 

Henceforth  the  problem  of  contpleting  '  Faust '  was 
the  problem  of  filling  in  before  and  after  the  *  Helena,' 
which  was  to  take  its  place  as  the  third  act  of  the  Second 
Part.  The  first  two  acts  were  written  first,  then  the  fifth, 
and  finally  the  fourth.  It  was  his  habit  to  work  at 
'  Faust '  only  in  the  morning  hours  when  mind  was  fresh 
and  vision  clear  and  Dame  Care  could  most  easily  be 
held  at  bay.  Sitting  on  a  hard  chair,  or  pacing  to  and 
fro  in  his  plain,  bare  study,  from  which  pictures,  rugs, 
statuary,  and  every  other  suggestion  of  wealth  and  com- 
fort had  been  rigorously  banished,  he  would  excogitate 


i66  GOETHE 

a  string  of  verses.  Then  he  would  write  them  down  in 
an  illegible  scrawl  with  a  blunt  lead  pencil  on  any  scrap 
of  paper  that  chanced  to  lie  at  hand.  These  jottings 
served  him  for  dictation  to  his  secretary,  who  would 
make  a  clean  copy  of  the  day's  work. 

The  details  of  the  architecture  are  reserved  for  the 
general  survey  of  *  Faust '  at  the  end  of  this  volume. 
There  is  evidence  enough  that  the  aging  Goethe  retained 
his  mental  vigor  and  his  imaginative  power  to  the  very 
end.  His  prose  undoubtedly  degenerated  with  the  lapse 
of  time,  becoming  stiff  and  formal  to  the  point  of  awk- 
wardness, even  in  his  letters.  This  is  partly  attributable 
to  his  life-long  habit  of  dictation.  Not  so,  however,  with 
his  verse.  The  most  we  can  say  is  that  his  poet's  passion 
for  pregnant  expression — which,  however,  is  by  no 
means  exclusively  characteristic  of  his  old  age — combin- 
ing toward  the  end  with  an  increasing  fondness  for  the 
symbolic,  sometimes  resulted  in  phrases  that  are  obscure 
and  even  un-German.  This  is  especially  the  case  in  the 
final  scene  of  *  Faust.*  But  there  he  was  trying  of  set 
purpose  to  express  the  inexpressible.  Taking  the  Second 
Part  as  a  whole  the  verbal  perplexities  are  no  more 
numerous  than  in  the  First  Part.  And  they  are  no  more 
numerous  in  either  than  in  many  a  play  of  Shakspere. 

The  summer  of  183 1  saw  the  completion  of  the  great 
poem  which  had  haunted  its  author's  mind  at  intervals 
for  sixty  years.  From  this  time  forth  Goethe  regarded 
his  remaining  days — so  he  told  Eckermann — as  a  free 
gift  of  the  gods.  He  and  his  faithful  secretary  had  seen 
through  the  press  the  forty  volumes  of  the  final  edition 
of  his  works,  for  which  he  had  secured  the  '  protecting 
privileges  of  the  most  serene  German  Confederation.* 


SENEX  MIRABILIS  167 

But  there  still  remained  material   for  fifteen  volumes 
more. 

We  have  it  from  several  sources  that  Goethe  remained 
well  and  cheerful  to  the  last.  But  the  winter  was  apt  to 
be  trying  for  him.  On  the  15th  of  March,  1832,  he 
took  a  cold  which  was  at  first  not  thought  menacing.  Two 
days  later  he  wrote  a  long  and  highly  interesting  letter 
to  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt.  Not  long  after  that  he  grew 
suddenly  worse,  suffering  from  chills  and  difficult  breath- 
ing. The  end  came  on  the  22nd,  just  before  noon.  Of 
his  last  words  there  is  no  record  that  is  anywise  authen- 
tic. Better  than  the  legendary  '  more  light,'  if  one  wishes 
to  sum  up  briefly  the  genius  of  his  life  and  aspiration,  are 
some  verses  of  his  dating  from  the  year  1817: 

Spacious  world  and  life  increasing, 
Honest  effort,  never  ceasing, 
Ever  searching,  ever  grounding, 
Never  ending,  often  rounding. 
Guarding  v^ell  the  ancient  treasure. 
Welcoming  the  new  with  pleasure. 
Pure  of  purpose,  happy-hearted. 
Well, — we  get  our  journey  started. 


PART   SECOND 
STUDIES  AND   APPRECIATIONS 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  PHILOSOPHER 

By  Goethe's  philosophy  I  mean  his  way  of  thinking 
about  the  world  of  experience.  To  attempt  an  account 
of  his  metaphysics  would  be  largely  futile  because  the 
data  are  insufficient.  The  world  beyond  experience  was 
for  him  the  domain  of  religion — of  Ahnung  rather  than 
of  clear  thinking.  It  was  there  for  reverence,  not  for  in- 
vestigation. His  nature  was  averse  to  abstract  specula- 
tion. To  use  his  own  mode  of  expression,  he  did  not 
venture  to  talk  of  the  absolute  in  a  theoretic  sense.  Yet 
he  was  much  given  to  theorizing  when  he  thought  he  had 
a  basis  in  nature  to  build  on.  Given  the  right  point  of 
departure  for  his  air-ship  and  he  was  quite  capable  of 
soaring  into  the  ether  and  breathing  the  thin  air  of  the 
unverifiable. 

So  it  is  that  his  writings  teem  with  sayings  in  verse 
and  in  prose  that  trench  on  philosophy  as  the  science 
of  fundamentals.  These  sayings  do  not  grow  out  of  a 
consistent  scheme  of  thought,  for  he  was  no  system- 
maker  but  an  eclectic  who  took  what  he  could  use  wher- 
ever he  might  find  it.  While  he  profited  by  reading  some 
of  the  great  systematic  thinkers,  notably  Spinoza,  Kant, 
and  Schelling,  in  the  main  they  only  confirmed  him  in 
previous  ways  of  thinking.  He  was  sometimes  tolerant 
and  sometimes  intolerant  of  views  opposed  to  his  own. 

171 


172  GOETHE 

It  must  be  remembered  too  that  many  of  his  best  dicta 
occur  in  plays  and  hence  must  be  used  warily  as  evidence 
of  the  author's  real  opinions.  So  it  happens  that  a  par- 
tisan of  almost  any  school  of  thought  can  buttress  his 
case  on  a  detached  citation  from  Goethe. 

But  these  more  or  less  detached  sayings,  often  aphor- 
istic, sometimes  humorous,  generally  incidental  to  some 
poetic  train  of  thought,  are  what  we  principally  have 
to  go  by.  His  more  persistent  and  connected  theorizing 
comes  in  connection  with  his  studies  in  natural  science. 
From  this  mass  of  miscellaneous  writings  we  have  to  ex- 
tract his  philosophy.  It  will  be  necessary  to  proceed  with 
circumspection,  keeping  steadily  to  the  larger  aspects 
of  his  thinking  and  not  trying  to  exhaust  the  subject  in 
all  its  ramifications,  lest  the  reader  be  exhausted  first. 
In  particular  we  must  avoid  hanging  too  heavy  weights 
of  logical  inference  on  slender  pegs  of  poetic  fancy  or 
passing  humor. 


In  his  youth  the  world  at  large  presented  itself  to 
Goethe's  poetic  vision  as  energy  and  order.  If  we  must 
have  a  name  for  his  way  of  thinking  let  us  call  it  cosmic 
dynamism.  When  Faust  has  his  wonderful  view  of  the 
macrocosm  what  he  sees  is  a  vast  evolving  system  of 
inter-related  parts  no  one  of  which  is  at  rest.  Each  part 
is  instinct  with  an  energy  that  keeps  it  moving — moving 
in  rhythmic  relation  to  all  the  rest.  By  their  motion 
the  parts  weave  themselves  into  a  harmonic  whole.  There 
is  no  room  for  anything  inert  or  stagnant,  and  no  dis- 
tinction appears  to  be  made  between  physical  and  spiritual 
forces.     The  universe  is  dynamic  and  the  effort  of  the 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  173 

dynamic  process  is  toward  the  realization  of  an  order 
that  is  coming  to  be.  A  little  later  Faust  passes  under 
the  magic  influence  of  the  Earth-spirit,  who  is  thought 
of  as  a  personification  of  terrestrial  energy.  He  is  the 
torrent  of  life,  the  rushing  storm  of  deeds,  the  surging 
wave,  the  blowing  wind,  birth  and  death,  glowing  life, 
the  eternal  weaver  at  the  humming  loom  of  time.  The 
magic  virtue  that  goes  out  from  him  is  itself  energy — a 
quickened  sense  of  power,  of  the  will  to  do  and  dare  and 
endure,  to  buffet  the  waves  and  face  shipwreck  without 
dismay. 

All  this  is  poetry,  not  philosophy,  but  it  points  clearly 
enough  to  the  idea  of  a  vast  dynamic  urge  embracing  all 
that  takes  place  on  the  earth  and  actuated  by  a  spirit 
whose  very  character  is  ceaseless  movement.  One  is 
reminded  of  the  Heraclitean  doctrine  that  all  things  move 
and  nothing  abides,  but  there  is  no  evidence  that  Goethe's 
early  thinking — the  portion  of  *  Faust '  referred  to  (lines 
430-509)  was  written  in  1774  or  1775 — was  affected 
by  Heraclitus,  or  that  he  had  undertaken  to  work  out 
for  himself,  whether  independently  or  with  the  help  of 
later  Greek  speculation,  the  ontological  problem  involved 
in  a  doctrine  of  flux.  That  problem  may  be  stated  thus : 
If  all  things  constantly  change  whereon  is  the  change 
wrought?  What  is  the  underlying  reality,  substance,  or 
being,  in  which  the  change  is  manifested? 

But  it  were  not  quite  correct  to  say  that  the  Goethe  of 
1775  had  never  attacked  this  problem  at  all.  He  had 
certainly  read  about  it  during  his  long  convalescence  in 
1 768- 1 770,  when  he  was  grappling  hard  with  the  Neo- 
platonists,  the  cabalists,  and  their  late-medieval  progeny. 
In  the  eighth  book  of  '  Poetry  and  Truth,'  written  some 


174  GOETHE 

forty  years  later,  we  have  his  own  account  of  the 
curious  cosmogony  that  he  had  extracted  from  his 
study  of  the  mystics.  Restated  in  greatly  condensed 
form  it  was  like  this :  In  the  beginning  the  triune  Deity 
had  created  itself  as  a  harmonious  world  of  spirit.  Then 
a  sort  of  fission  had  occurred,  sundering  the  creator 
from  the  created  and  giving  rise  to  Lucifer  as  Lord  of 
Matter.  In  this  way  conflict  had  come  into  the  har- 
monious world,  matter  always  pulling  down  and  being 
incapable  of  rising  to  the  divine.  Then,  finally,  by  a  spe- 
cial act  of  grace  on  the  part  of  the  Elohim,  man  had 
been  created  as  a  being  of  a  dual  nature,  pulling  and 
pulled  two  ways  at  once. 

That  real  knowledge  of  the  world  we  live  in  could 
never  be  furthered  by  such  fantastic  assumptions,  oper- 
ating with  inconceivable  powers  and  processes,  must 
have  quickly  become  evident  to  Goethe  as  soon  as  he 
emerged  from  the  close  air  of  his  father's  library  and 
was  caught  once  more  by  the  current  of  life.  For  he 
was  dowered  with  a  strong  sense  of  reality.  What  won- 
der, then,  if  he  recoiled  against  metaphysics,  even  as 
he  sickened  of  talk  about  heaven?  He  had  heard  aca- 
demic lectures  on  philosophy  at  Leipsic  and  must  have 
absorbed  some  of  the  Leibnitzian  ideas  and  terminology. 
But  in  general — so  we  must  infer  from  *  Faust ' — he  had 
no  stomach  for  the  subject.  Afterwards,  while  ill,  he 
had  very  seriously  sought  for  light  in  his  own  way  and 
had  landed  in  a  muddle  of  unthinkable  assumptions  which 
explained  nothing  and  rather  intensified  the  darkness. 
Some  of  these  mystical  ideas,  to  be  sure,  the  poet  in  him 
could  use  and  did  use  in  depicting  the  struggles  of  an 
imaginary  searcher  after  light,  but  for  the  sober  think- 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  175 

ing  mind  there  was  no  help  in  them.  The  riddle  of 
the  world  was  not  to  be  solved  by  lonely  pondering  of 
dead  men's  guesses. 

This  recoil  against  speculation  from  abstract  prem- 
ises or  unverifiable  assumptions  is  expressed  in  many 
passages  of  '  Faust.'  It  is  true  that  the  arraignment 
usually  proceeds  from  the  mouth  of  Mephistopheles, 
but  one  must  remember  that  he  is  only  a  little  less  Goethe 
than  is  Faust.  When  Mephistopheles  advises  the  fresh- 
man to  study  metaphysics  and  goes  on  to  describe  it  as 
a  matter  of  trying  hard  to  grasp  what  will  not  go  into 
the  human  mind,  and  of  letting  fine  words  do  duty  for 
ideas — all  that  is  just  as  much  Goethe  as  are  the  tran- 
scendental longings  of  Faust.. 

In  another  passage,  Faust  having  just  set  forth  his  wild 
dream  of  universal  experience,  Mephistopheles  observes 
that  this  world  as  a  whole  is  made  only  for  a  god — 
which  is  a  way  of  saying  that  man  can  not  possibly  com- 
prehend it.  A  little  further  on  the  man  who  speculates 
is  likened  to  a  bewitched  animal  that  wanders  about  in 
the  field  refusing  the  good  green  pasture  that  lies  on 
every  hand.  But  there  is  no  need  of  further  references. 
The  very  heart  of  the  Faust-poem,  as  originally  con- 
ceived, is  revolt  against  intellectualism.  Its  starting- 
point  is  Faust's  passionate  conviction  that  the  thinking 
mind  is  unable  to  solve  ultimate  problems  or  to  achieve 
happiness. 

What  gives  interest  to  these  ideas  as  recorded  in  the 
early  portions  of  '  Faust '  is  the  fact  that  in  an  impor- 
tant sense  they  continued  to  form  the  basis  of  Goethe's 
philosophy.  That  is,  he  remained  a  dynamist  with  re- 
spect to  the  phenomenal  world,  an  agnostic  with  respect 


176  GOETHE 

to  the  absolute.  I  use  the  word  dynamist  to  denote  one 
who  habitually  sees  the  world,  not  as  something  static 
or  inert,  but  as  a  manifestation  of  indwelling  energy. 
Nothing  is  more  characteristic,  more  fundamental,  in 
Goethe  than  this  dynamism  of  his.  Nature  is  everywhere 
alive  and  at  work.  There  is  no  rest,  no  death  in  the 
sense  of  final  extinction  or  stagnation. 

II 

Such  being  his  ingrained  habit  of  mind,  it  is  a  little 
surprising  at  first  that  Goethe  should  have  been  so 
strongly  drawn  to  Spinoza.  For  Spinoza's  universe  is 
anything  but  dynamic.  As  a  human  being  the  lens- 
grinder  of  Amsterdam  had  an  eye  for  the  concrete,  but 
as  a  philosopher  he  took  little  note  of  particulars.  The 
manifoldness  of  Nature  with  her  contending  forces,  the 
urge  and  push  of  the  cosmos,  the  struggles  and  trials 
of  humanity,  seem  in  his  system  to  be  submerged  and 
lost  to  view  in  the  infinite  ocean  of  the  one  eternal  sub- 
stance. His  is  an  inert  world;  at  least  it  might  be  for 
anything  explicit  in  his  words.  And  then  too  the  very 
basis  of  his  thinking  is  confidence  in  logic.  He  never 
doubts  that  the  thinking  mind  can  read  the  riddle  of 
the  world.  Rationality  is  for  him  at  once  the  test  and 
the  organon  of  truth. 

In  both  these  respects  the  genius  of  Spinoza's  phi- 
losophy is  opposed  to  Goethe's  way  of  thinking.  Not 
only  was  his  universe  dynamic, — a  shoreless  fountain- 
ocean  of  force,  to  use  a  phrase  of  Carlyle, — while 
Spinoza's  is  placidity  itself,  but  he  had  little  faith  in 
abstract  ratiocination.  From  first  to  last  he  held  that 
feeling  and  intuition  are  more  to  be  trusted  than  logic 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  177 

when  it  is  a  question  of  comprehending  life  and  its 
processes.  Long  before  he  became  acquainted  with 
Schelhng  or  with  any  theory  of  intellectual  intuition, 
his  way  of  looking  at  things  was  that  of  the  artist,  who 
must  first  apprehend  with  his  feeling  before  he  can  com- 
prehend with  his  intellect.  Just  as  logical  analysis  pro- 
ceeding from  an  attitude  of  cool  intellectual  aloofness 
can  never  explain  a  work  of  human  art,  that  is,  tell 
us  what  it  really  is,  so  he  would  have  said  that  rea- 
soning can  not  possibly  explain  the  ultimate  secret  of 
nature,  who  is  the  supreme  artist.  The  reasoner  can 
study  the  artist's  technic  and  methods,  can  compare  and 
deduce  and  criticize,  but  the  vital  essence  of  the  art- 
work, that  which  makes  it  what  it  is,  discloses  itself 
only  to  the  kindled  imagination.  Now  of  all  this  there 
is  nothing  in  Spinoza's  calm  geometrical  reasoning.  If 
there  is  anything  it  must  be  read  between  the  lines. 

Whence  came,  then,  the  attracting  power  of  Spinoza? 
It  will  be  worth  while  to  cite  Goethe's  own  words  on 
that  subject  from  *  Poetry  and  Truth  ' : 

When  I  had  sought  the  world  over  for  a  means  of  education 
of  my  singular  character  I  came  upon  the  *  Ethics '  of  this 
man.  What  I  may  have  read  out  of  the  book  and  what  I  may 
have  read  into  it  I  could  hardly  tell.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  I 
found  here  that  which  quieted  my  passions  and  seemed  to 
offer  me  a  large  and  free  outlook  over  the  physical  and  moral 
world.  But  that  which  especially  drew  me  to  him  was  the 
boundless  unselfishness  that  shone  from  every  sentence.  That 
marvelous  saying,  '  Whoso  truly  loves  God  must  not  demand 
that  God  love  him  in  return,'  with  all  the  propositions  that 
support  it  and  the  consequences  that  flow  from  it,  filled  my 
mind  completely.  To  be  unselfish  in  everything,  and  most  so 
in  love  and  friendship,  was  my  delight,  my  maxim,  my  exer- 
cise; so  that  that  later  wild  saying,  'If  I  love  thee  what  is 
that  to  thee  ? '  came  from  my  very  heart.    For  the  rest,  let  me 


178  GOETHE 

not  fail  to  recognize  here  also  that  the  most  intimate  unions 
spring  from  contrasts.  Spinoza's  perfect  equanimity  con- 
trasted with  my  turbulent  striving.  His  mathematical  method 
was  the  opposite  of  my  poetic  way  of  thinking  and  putting 
things,  and  precisely  that  artificial  treatment  which  some 
thought  ill-adapted  to  ethical  subjects  made  me  his  earnest 
disciple  and  excited  my  ardent  admiration. 

Not  much  importance  can  be  attached  to  the  sugges- 
tion about  the  attraction  of  opposites,  a  doctrine  which 
is  more  a  popular  myth  than  a  law  of  human  nature. 
There  is  abundant  evidence  that  Goethe  was  repelled 
from  other  men  by  the  very  qualities  which  he  thinks 
drew  him  to  Spinoza.  In  *  Faust  *  he  pours  ridicule  on 
the  whole  business  of  logic-chopping  and  he  remained  dis- 
trustful of  formal  proof  as  a  means  of  arriving  at  truth. 
Perhaps  it  were  nearer  the  mark  to  say  that  he  was  orig- 
inally drawn  to  Spinoza  as  a  famous  heretic  whom 
posterity  in  its  ignorance  had  given  a  bad  name — that 
of  an  atheist  and  subverter  of  religion.  When  he  began 
to  read  him  and  found  out  how  far  all  that  was  from 
the  truth,  he  felt  drawn  to  him,  just  as  toward  Bruno 
and  other  bugbears  of  the  orthodox.  After  all,  the  Jew 
philosopher  was  a  man  and  a  brother  whom  he  could 
take  to  his  heart. 

But  however  one  may  settle  the  question  of  spiritual 
affinities  which  Goethe  declared  he  could  not  settle,  the 
passage  just  quoted  from  '  Poetry  and  Truth  '  makes 
it  fairly  clear  that/ Spinoza's  influence  was  more  reli- 
gious than  intellectual.  He  provided  a  moral  sedative, 
quieting  passions  that  were  just  then  much  in  need  of 
quieting  and  opening  larger  vistas  in  every  direction. 
Reading  him  was  like  getting  the  sun  after  a  season 
of  foggy  weather  on  the  sea.    Goethe's  religious  nature 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  179 

demanded  an  immanent  God  working  from  within,  and 
such  a  God  Spinoza  gave  him.    He  says  in  a  poem: 

What  were  a  God  who  merely  stood  aloof 
And  let  the  world  spin  round  for  His  behoof? 
Him  it  befits  to  dwell  within,  and  so 
Himself  in  All,  All  in  Himself  to  show; 
So  that  what  works  in  Him  from  hour  to  hour 
May  never  miss  His  spirit  or  His  power. 

This  doctrine  gave  him  his  bearings  in  a  law-governed 
universe  divine  at  every  point.  He  also  found  here  that 
which  satisfied  his  artistic  as  well  as  his  religious  nature. 
For  God-Nature  appeared  as  the  summation  of  the  All — 
a  Power  to  be  studied  in  its  ways  of  working  by  the 
thinking  mind,  imitated  in  its  works  by  the  creative 
imagination,  and  reverenced  in  its  ultimate  inscrutabil- 
ity by  the  religious  spirit.  Spinoza's  '  intellectual  love 
of  God  * — knowing  the  laws  of  the  universe  and  acqui- 
escing in  them — proffered  a  supreme  ideal  of  aspiration. 
It  is  not  strange  that  he  was  ready  to  listen  to  a  man 
who  told  him  that  the  nature  he  loved  and  the  God  with 
whom  as  a  boy  he  had  tried  to  establish  a  personal  rela- 
tion— that  these  two  were  one;  that  outside  that  One 
nothing  whatever  was  conceivable,  and  that  of  that  One 
changeless  eternal  law  was  the  very  essence. 

An  attentive  reader  of  Spinoza  has  no  great  difficulty 
in  picking  out  the  ideas  that  must  have  captivated  the 
mind  of  Goethe.  They  were  the  triad  of  mutually  inter- 
limiting  doctrines:  self-affirmation,  self-control,  and^selfr. 
_sur render.  The  first  is  the  law  of  '  persistence  in  one's 
own  being '  which  Spinoza  makes  to  be  the  foundation 
of  all  virtue.     He  says : 


i8o  GOETHE 

Since  reason  demands  nothing  contrary  to  nature,  it  there- 
fore demands  that  everyone  shall  love  himself,  seek  his  own 
true  advantage,  desire  all  that  leads  a  man  to  greater  perfec- 
tion, and  generally,  so  far  as  in  him  lies,  endeavor  to  persist 
in  his  own  being.  Then,  seeing  that  virtue  is  naught  else  than 
acting  according  to  the  laws  of  one's  own  nature,  and  seeing 
that  no  one  endeavors  to  preserve  his  own  being  except  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  laws  of  his  own  nature,  it  follows  that  the 
foundation  of  virtue  is  this  very  endeavor  to  persist  in  one's 
own  being. 


The  second  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  struggle 
for  that  freedom  which  he  regards  as  the  main  part  of 
man's  perfection.  According  to  Spinoza  passion  is  a 
'  confused  idea  '  which  ceases  to  be  such  when  we  form 
a  clear  notion  of  it,  that  is,  when  we  understand  it  as 
a  link  in  a  chain  of  necessary  causation.  Thus  the  first 
step  toward  freedom  is  to  learn  to  comprehend  one's 
own  being  as  a  part  of  the  Eternal  Order  which  is  God; 
for  passion  is  subdued  the  moment  we  think  of  it  as 
inevitable. 

The  third  law  grows  out  of  the  quest  for  happiness, 
which  demands  an  infinite  and  eternal  object  of  affec- 
tion. It  is  best  set  forth,  not  in  the  'Ethics,'  but  in  the 
treatise  on  the  '  Improvement  of  the  Intellect,'  as  follows : 

I  noticed,  moreover,  that  happiness  and  unhappiness  depend 
on  the  character  of  the  object  to  which  we  attach  our  affec- 
tions. For  about  that  which  is  not  loved  there  is  never  any 
contention;  there  is  no  sorrow  if  it  die,  no  envy  if  it  be  pos- 
sessed by  another,  no  fear,  no  hate,  no  disturbance  of  the 
mind  whatever;  all  of  which  things  happen  if  one  loves  that 
which  can  perish.  But  love  for  a  thing  infinite  and  eternal 
feeds  the  mind  with  a  pure  joy  that  is  free  from  all  sorrow; 
a  thing  which  is  greatly  to  be  desired  and  sought  for  with  all 
one's  powers. 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  i8i 

Under  each  of  these  heads  it  would  be  possible  to 
marshal  a  goodly  number  of  quotations  from  Goethe. 
Broadly  speaking  one  may  say  that  the  first  furnished 
the  maxim  of  his  youth,  the  second  that  of  the  middle 
portion  of  his  life,  the  last  that  of  his  declining  years. 
The  first  connects  itself  with  his  youthful  emotionalism, 
his  '  forward  push,'  his  impulse  to  live  as  fully  as  pos- 
sible, to  develop  his  personality,  to  build  up  the  pyramid 
of  his  existence.  The  second  marks  and  grows  out  of 
his  gradual  recognition  of  the  truth  that  all  this  is  pos- 
sible only  by  the  partial  inhibition  of  spontaneous  im- 
pulse in  the  interest  of  a  larger  freedom.  Self-control 
is  a  Goethean  specialty.  '  Whatsoever  frees  our  minds,' 
he  says,  *  without  giving  us  control  over  ourselves  is 
ruinous.'  And  again:  '  What  government  is  best?  That 
which  teaches  us  to  govern  ourselves.'  Not  to  multiply 
citations,  let  it  suffice  to  adduce  a  stanza  from  the 
'  Mysteries,'  where  the  doctrine  is  set  forth  better,  per- 
haps, than  anywhere  else : 

For  every  power  tends  forward  to  the  distance, 
To  live  and  to  be  working  here  and  there; 
And  thereunto  its  obstinate  resistance 
The  Stream  of  Time  opposeth  everywhere. 
Amid  this  stormy,  difficult  existence 
The  spirit  hears  the  oracles  declare: 
That  thrall  the  universal  tyrant  shapeth 
He  that  subdues  himself  alone  escapeth. 

In  connection  with  the  maxim  of  self-surrender  we 
may  think  of  Goethe's  later  devotion  to  scientific  studies 
carried  on  to  the  end  of  understanding  the  primal  laws 
which,  as  he  believed,  expressed  the  inmost  essence  of 
the  over-ruling  divinity.    We  may  think  also  of  his  long 


i82  GOETHE 

and  persistent  preaching  of  renunciation  and  of  many 
such  sayings  as  that  the  whole  art  of  Hfe  consists  in 
'  giving  up  our  existence  in  order  to  exist.'  A  passage 
in  '  Poetry  and  Truth '  runs  as  follows : 

We  put  one  passion  in  place  of  another;  employments,  dilet- 
tantisms, hobbies — we  try  them  all  through  to  the  end  only  to 
cry  out  at  last  that  all  is  vanity.  No  one  is  horrified  at  this 
false,  this  blasphemous  saying;  indeed  it  is  thought  to  be 
wise  and  irrefutable.  But  there  are  few  persons  who,  antici- 
pating such  intolerable  feelings,  in  order  to  avoid  all  partial 
resignations,  resign  themselves  universally  once  for  all.  Such 
persons  convince  themselves  of  the  eternal,  necessary,  law- 
governed  order  of  things  and  try  to  acquire  ideas  which  are 
indestructible  and  are  only  confirmed  by  the  contemplation  of 
that  which  is  transient. 

I  think  the  totality  of  Spinoza's  influence  is  best 
summed  up  in  a  stanza  of  the  poem  '  One  and  All,'  per- 
haps the  most  pregnant  half-dozen  lines  to  be  found  in 
the  whole  range  of  Goethe's  verse: 

Soul  of  the  World,  come  and  invest  us! 
Then  with  the  World-mind's  self  to  test  us 

Becomes  our  being's  noble  call; 
Good  spirits  lead,  our  way  attending, 
High  masters,  soothing  and  befriending, 

To  Him  that  made  and  makes  the  All. 


Ill 

i  But  if  one  takes  Spinoza's  philosophy  as  a  guide  and 
plunges  into  the  manifold  of  experience  with  it  there 
is  little  help  to  be  got  from  it.  It  has  nothing  to  say 
as  to  the  why  or  how  of  nature's  processes  in  detail, 
gives  no  clue  to  any  particular  law.  All  possibilities  are 
equally  provided  for  in  advance.    Whatever  is,  is  God. 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  183 

It  was  different  in  the  case  of  Kant,  who  began  as 
a  physicist  and  whose  first  great  critique  was  primarily 
an  attempt  to  stake  off  the  knowable  and  close  the  door 
on  all  metaphysics  of  the  absolute.  As  the  '  Critique 
of  Pure  Reason'  (1781)  in  effect  undertook  to  prove 
what  was  for  Goethe  virtually  a  fundamental  postulate 
one  might  suppose  that  the  famous  book  would  at  once 
have  attracted  his  attention.  But  there  is  no  evidence 
that  such  was  the  case.  Beginning  in  1789  he  certainly 
did  occupy  himself  with  Kant,  but  at  that  time  it  was 
the  then  new  '  Critique  of  Judgment '  that  interested 
him — more  particularly,  it  would  seem,  on  the  side  of 
esthetic  theory.  Possibly  too  at  this  time,  and  certainly 
not  much  later,  he  studied  an  earlier  work  of  Kant, 
namely,  the  '  Metaphysical  Foundations  of  Natural 
Science.'  In  a  letter  written  to  one  Professor  Schweigger 
in  1814  we  read: 

Since  our  excellent  Kant  says  in  plain  words  that  matter  can 
not  be  conceived  without  attraction  and  repulsion,  which 
means,  I  take  it,  without  polarity,  I  am  well  satisfied  to  per- 
sist in  my  view  of  the  world  under  this  authority,  in  accord- 
ance with  my  earliest  convictions,  which  have  never  seemed 
to  me  doubtful. 

So  it  appears  that  in  18 14  Goethe  regarded  the  law 
of  polarity  as  the  all-explaining  principle,  the  backbone 
of  his  philosophy.  He  implies  that  his  own  discovery 
or  acceptance  of  the  law  preceded  his  acquaintance  with 
Kant,  but  he  was  glad  to  have  Kant's  great  authority 
for  the  doctrine.  The  phrase  '  earliest  convictions  '  must 
not  be  taken  too  literally.  There  is  nothing  about  polar- 
ity in  Goethe's  early  writings;  the  word  does  not  come 
into   his    vocabulary    until    about    1792.     Probably    he 


1 84  GOETHE 

used  the  word  *  earliest,'  not  with  reference  to  his  life 
or  his  literary  career  as  a  whole,  but  with  reference  to 
the  period  when  he  first  took  up  the  study  of  natural 
science  and  began  to  have  *  convictions  '  about  it.  This 
was  in  the  early  'eighties. 

In  this  connection,  as  bearing  on  the  influence  of  Kant 
and  the  date  when  the  law  of  polarity  first  took  shape 
in  Goethe's  mind,  another  passage,  this  time  from  the 
'  Campaign  in  France,'  is  of  some  interest.  This  book 
was  got  ready  for  publication  in  1820- 1822,  but  on  the 
basis  of  notes  taken  in  1792.    The  passage  is  as  follows: 

One  can  not  imagine  a  more  isolated  man  than  I  was  at  that 
time  and  long  continued  to  be.  The  hylozoism,  or  whatever 
one  chooses  to  call  it,  which  I  held  to  and  whose  depths  I 
left  undisturbed,  made  me  unreceptive,  nay  intolerant,  of  that 
way  of  thinking  which  sets  up  as  its  confession  of  faith  a 
dead  matter  moved  or  agitated  in  some  way  [from  without.]  I 
had  not  failed  to  note  in  Kant's  natural  science  that  attrac- 
tion and  repulsion  pertained  to  the  essence  of  matter,  and  that 
neither  could  be  separated  from  the  other  in  any  concept  of 
matter.  From  this  I  perceived  the  primal  polarity  of  all  things, 
which  permeates  and  animates  the  infinite  variety  of  phe- 
nomena. 

So  we  see  that  the  sum  and  substance  of  Goethe's 
debt  to  Kant,  so  far  as  he  remained  conscious  of  any 
debt  at  all,  was  the  idea  that  matter  is  dynamically 
constituted,  that  is,  endowed  with  an  inherent  tendency 
to  move.  The  doctrine  was  formulated  by  the  youth- 
ful Kant,  before  he  became  famous,  as  a  logical  deduc- 
tion from  the  Newtonian  law  of  gravitation.  If  there 
was  a  gravitational  pull  there  had  to  be  a  resisting  push. 
It  may  be  remarked  in  passing  that  Kant  himself  never 
banked  heavily  on  the  doctrine,  treating  it  simply  as  a 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  185 

necessary  postulate  of  physics.    In  his  critical  philosophy 
it  cuts  little  or  no  figure. 

But  Goethe  was  less  cautious.  Not  content  to  leave 
the  antagonism  of  forces  as  a  physical  phenomenon  of 
mass,  he  undertook  to  extend  the  scope  of  the  law  to 
the  biological  and  spiritual  realms  and  gradually  made 
of  it  a  sort  of  universal  key  to  all  phenomena.  And 
yet,  key  is  hardly  the  right  word,  since  it  unlocked  noth- 
ing but  only  subsumed  under  one  head  a  variety  of  hap- 
penings that  had  else  seemed  chaotic  and  bewildering.' 
We  have  his  word  for  it  that  he  wrote  his  paper  on  plant- 
metamorphosis  before  he  had  read  Kant  at  all.  A  pas- 
sage in  his  notes  preparatory  to  that  paper  runs  as 
follows : 

In  the  progressive  changes  of  the  parts  of  a  plant  there  is  a 
force  at  work  which  only  by  an  inexact  use  of  words  I  can  call 
attraction  and  repulsion.  It  would  be  better  to  call  it  .*•  or  3;  in 
algebraic  fashion,  since  the  words  expansion  and  contraction 
do  not  fully  describe  it.  It  contracts  and  expands,  builds  out 
and  transforms  (bildet  aus  iind  bildet  um),  unites,  separates, 
colors,  decolors,  broadens,  lengthens,  softens,  hardens,  imparts, 
and  withdraws.  Only  when  we  cognize  all  its  effects  under  the 
aspect  of  unity  do  we  get  a  clearer  view  of  what  I  have  been 
trying  to  explain  by  all  these  words. 

Here  there  is  nothing  about  attraction  and  repulsion, 
which  of  course  did  not  fit  the  case  of  plant-growth. 
Instead  we  find  the  antithesis  expansion  and  contraction, 
and  this  is  admitted  to  be  inexact.  The  whole  passage 
is  typical  of  Goethe's  imprecision  in  scientific  matters. 
He  is  not  looking  for  the  physical  causes  of  a  plant's 
growth,  or  for  anything  that  can  be  weighed  and  meas- 
ured. He  is  seeking  to  understand  the  mind  of  the  artist 
Nature.     He  notes  that  she  operates  in  various  ways, 


i86  GOETHE 

producing  different  effects  for  which  language  has  divers 
names.  It  seems  to  him  a  gain  in  clearness  to  regard  all 
these  effects  as  proceeding  from  one  force  operating 
variously,  and  to  have  a  name  for  this  force  even  if  it  is 
not  a  good  name. 

So  then  the  Goethean  doctrine  is  that  the  primal  law 
of  the  dynamic  world-process  is  a  law  of  antagonistic 
forces  manifesting  itself  as  action  and  reaction,  expan- 
sion and  contraction,  ebb  and  flow,  heating  and  cool- 
ing, enjoying  and  suffering,  and  countless  other  rhyth- 
mical or  pulsating  movements.  The  action  of  the  heart 
in  its  systole  and  diastole  furnished  him  with  one  of  his 
favorite  names  for  the  universal  rhythm,  but  on  the 
whole  he  preferred  to  call  it  polarity  from  the  phenom- 
enon of  magnetism.  This  seemed  to  him  to  present  the 
law  in  its  simplest  aspect  beyond  which  the  mind  could 
not  go;  to  be,  in  other  words,  a  'primal  phenomenon' 
(Urphenomen).  His  idea  was  that  the  actual  state  of 
the  world  at  any  particular  time  is  the  resultant  of  all 
these  multitudinous,  antagonistic,  rhythmically  acting 
forces. 

If  the  matter  ended  here  the  universe  would  present 
itself  as  a  vast  nexus  of  never-ending  see-saws;  for  it 
belongs  to  the  doctrine  that  all  equilibriums  are  but 
temporary,  the  see-saw  soon  beginning  again.  To  escape 
from  this  somewhat  depressing  view  of  the  world  Goethe 
postulated  a  second  law,  that  of  ascent  (Steigerung).  By 
this  he  meant  an  upward  tendency  in  the  pulsation  such 
that,  while  everything  recurs  rhythmically,  it  does  not 
come  back  to  the  precise  point  where  it  was  before,  but 
to  a  point  a  little  higher.  He  calls  this  brace  of  laws, 
polarity  and  ascent,  *  nature's  two  great  mainsprings.' 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  187 

In  general  he  held  that  the  former  operated  in  the 
material  realm,  the  latter  in  the  spiritual;  but  that  each 
sometimes  crossed  the  border,  so  to  speak,  and  worked 
in  the  other's  domain.  To  quote  his  exact  words  from 
a  comment  he  wrote  in  after  years  on  his  friend  Tobler's 
aphoristic  essay  '  Nature,'  written  in  1782  and  at  first 
supposed  by  some  to  be  Goethe's  own  work : 

But  as  matter  never  exists  and  operates  without  mind,  or 
mind  without  matter,  matter  is  capable  of  rising,  just  as  mind 
clings  to  the  power  of  attracting  and  repelling. 

In  his  essay  on  plant-metamorphosis  he  observes  that 
as  we  pass  upward  from  the  root  there  is  a  progres- 
sive '  refinement  of  juices,'  from  node  to  node,  each 
'  filtering '  them  and  passing  them  on  in  a  purer  form 
to  the  next.  That  is,  for  example,  the  calyx  has  coarser 
juices  than  the  corolla.  In  general,  plant-metamorphosis 
is  described  as  a  '  process  of  progressive  ennoblement, 
such  that  everything  material,  lower,  commoner,  is  grad- 
ually left  behind,  while  the  higher,  the  spiritual,  the  bet- 
ter, makes  its  appearance  in  greater  freedom.' 

The  law  of  ascent,  that  is,  the  upward  tendency  of 
the  recurrent  pulsations,  Goethe  found  best  figured  as 
motion  along  a  spiral  curve.  Spiral  movement,  accord- 
ingly, plays  a  role  in  his  nomenclature.  But  just  as  his 
notion  of  polarity  is  vague  and  elastic,  so  his  notion  of 
ascent.  It  corresponds  to  such  unmeasurable  concepts 
as  ennoblement,  spiritualization,  refinement.  In  chro- 
matics it  is  something  which  converts  blue  or  yellow 
into  red,  or  tinges  the  sunny  side  of  an  apple  with  a 
deeper  hue.  Only  as  to  the  rising  scale  of  animal  organ- 
isms does  it  take  on  a  measure  of  scientific  clarity.     On 


i88  GOETHE 

this  subject  he  says,  anticipating  Spencer's  law  of  pro- 
gressive differentiation : 

The  more  imperfect  a  creature  is,  the  more  its  parts  resemble 
one  another  and  the  whole.  The  more  perfect  it  becomes,  the 
more  dissimilar  its  parts.  .  .  .  The  more  the  parts  resemble 
one  another,  the  less  they  are  subordinated  among  themselves. 
Subordination  of  the  parts  indicates  a  perfect  creature. 


IV 

What  has  just  been  said  relates  to  the  mode  of  nature's 
operation.  But  however  we  simplify  the  dynamic  pro- 
cess the  ontological  problem  remains.  What  is  the  raw 
material,  so  to  speak,  which  Nature  actuates  with  her 
two  mainsprings?  Is  matter  force?  Are  life  and  mind 
derivative?  If  we  say  no,  then  what  becomes  of  the 
world's  oneness?  If  we  say  yes,  what  then  is  the  primal 
entity?  Such  questions  as  these  must  either  be  laid  on 
the  shelf  with  Kant,  who  consigned  them  to  the  limbo 
of  the  unknowable,  or  else  they  must  be  answered  pro- 
visionally by  a  metaphysical  assumption. 

At  this  point  Goethe  diverged  somewhat  from  Kant 
and  seemed  to  find  what  he  wanted  in  Schelling's  phi- 
losophy of  nature.  In  Schelling's  scheme  the  world- 
process  is  the  world-soul  gradually  becoming  conscious 
of  itself.  Its  analog  is  the  self-conscious  human  ego 
which  knows  itself  directly  and  not  by  any  process  of 
logical  reasoning.  The  theory  of  intellectual  intuition 
harmonized  very  well  with  Goethe's  artistic  tempera- 
ment. He  had  always  believed  in  a  way  that  the  artist's 
divination  offers  a  better  key  to  the  world-riddle  than 
the  reasoner's  logic.  It  was  pleasant  to  hear  that  this 
very  doctrine  was  the  latest  word  in  philosophy. 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  189 

The  essential  part  of  Goethe's  ontological  creed,  his 
theory  of  types,  had  been  worked  out  before  Schelling 
began  to  write,  and  worked  out  by  the  very  intuitional 
method  that  Schelling  stood  for.  The  theory  was  a  form 
of  subjective  idealism  on  a  basis  of  metaphysical  agnos- 
ticism. Dismissing  the  ultimate  nature  of  matter  and 
mind  as  an  unsolvable  problem,  recognizing  the  unthink- 
ableness  of  creation  and  the  inscrutableness  of  the  abso- 
lute, yet  clinging  tenaciously  to  the  monistic  point  of 
view,  it  assumed  that  what  we  actually  see  going  on 
in  the  world  is  the  evolution  of  types.  The  type  is  the 
primordial  and  permanent  factor,  all  else  being  flux. 
Such  an  archetype  he  called  an  Urbild,  a  '  primal  form.' 
But  this  primal  or  archetypal  form  had  no  objective  exist- 
ence, never  being  perfectly  realized.  It  was  only  a  fig- 
ment of  the  world-mind,  the  mental  pattern  by  which 
God-Nature  had  chosen  to  work.  Hence  he  often  used 
the  name  '  idea,'  that  is,  a  form  seen  by  the  mind's  eye. 
A  particular  form  seen  by  the  physical  eye  is  always 
a  copy  of  the  archetype,  but  never  a  perfect  copy — 
always  more  or  less  modified  under  the  operation  of 
the  laws  of  polarity  and  ascent. 

Thus  morphology  in  the  broadest  sense,  that  is,  the 
doctrine  of  forms,  became  for  Goethe  the  fundamental 
science.  The  object  of  his  quest  was  to  comprehend  the 
actual  form  of  manifestation  as  related  to  the  archetypal 
idea.  His  method  was  to  scrutinize  the  visible  forms  of 
nature  for  the  purpose  of  divining  the  idea,  and  then 
to  observe  in  detail  how  the  idea  was  bodied  forth — 
approached,  departed  from,  concealed,  modified,  but 
never  completely  lost  sight  of — in  the  world  of  actuality. 
He    applied    his    method    in    botany,    zoology,  geology, 


190  GOETHE 

chromatics,  and  meteorology,  but  I  shall  not  now  follow 
him  into  the  details  of  his  speculation.  We  are  here  con- 
cerned only  with  his  philosophy,  his  general  way  of 
thinking.  To  my  own  mind  the  most  interesting  ques- 
tion arising  from  his  scientific  studies  is  that  of  his  rela- 
tion to  the  development  hypothesis — whether  he  is  really 
to  be  counted  among  the  forerunners  of  Darwin  or  not. 
That  question,  which  involves  some  scrutiny  of  his  scien- 
tific labors  in  general,  is  taken  up  in  the  next  chapter. 


It  will  now  be  in  order  to  note  how  Goethe's  funda- 
mental doctrines  of  antagonistic  forces,  of  polarity  and 
ascent,  are  reflected  in  his  general  view  of  life  and  of 
human  nature.  The  temporal  phase  of  polarity  is  period- 
icity, of  which  he  was  a  keen  observer.  Thus  he  re- 
marks in  '  Poetry  and  Truth,'  in  speaking  reminiscently 
of  his  youthful  Wertherism: 

All  enjoyment  of  life  depends  on  the  regular  recurrence  of 
external  phenomena.  The  alternation  of  day  and  night,  of  the 
seasons,  of  blossom  and  fruit,  of  whatever  comes  to  us  period- 
ically,— these  are  the  mainsprings  of  earthly  existence.  The 
more  sensitive  v^e  are  to  these  enjoyments,  the  happier  vje  feel. 
.  .  .  But  if  these  varying  phenomena  come  and  go  without 
exciting  our  interest  .  .  .  then  sets  in  the  greatest  of  evils,  the 
worst  of  maladies:  life  itself  is  felt  as  a  loathsome  burden. 

One  is  reminded  of  his  couplet: 

Naught  is  unbearable  in  nature's  ways 
Except  a  series  of  pleasant  days. 

A  passage  from  his  diary  of  the  year  1780  runs  thus: 

I  must  notice  more  closely  my  inwardly  revolving  cycle  of 
good  and  bad  days,  of  passions,  inclinations,  impulse  to  do  this 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  191 

or  that.  Invention,  execution,  arrangement,  everything  comes 
and  goes  in  regular  order — cheerfulness,  sadness,  strength, 
elasticity,  weakness,  calm,  and  likewise  desire.  As  I  am  living 
very  hygienically  the  regular  movement  is  not  interrupted,  and 
I  must  try  to  find  out  in  what  period  and  order  I  revolve  about 
myself. 

This  study  of  the  natural  rhythm  of  his  being  led 
him  to  conclude  that  there  was  no  use  in  kicking  against 
the  pricks.  The  wise  plan  was  not  to  try  to  '  command 
his  poetry,'  as  the  Director  requires  in  the  Prelude  to 
*  Faust,'  but  to  follow  nature's  leading  and  allow  his 
life  to  alternate  between  the  distractions  (diastole)  of 
business  and  society,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  concen- 
tration (systole)  of  creative  effort  on  the  other.  On 
this  subject  he  has  an  excursus  too  long  to  quote  in  the 
sixteenth  book  of  '  Poetry  and  Truth.'  The  doctrine 
is  put  epigrammatically  in  a  matter-of-fact  stanza  of 
the  '  Divan  ' : 

In  breathing,  lo,  are  blessings  twain. 
To  draw  in  air  and  expel  it  again; 
The  one  oppresses,  the  other  relieves, 
So  strangely  Life  her  fabric  weaves. 

Again,  life  is  continually  conceived  under  the  aspect 
of  stimulus  and  response.  We  hear  a  great  deal  about 
action  and  reaction.  What  the  individual  does  is  his 
response  to  some  stimulus  offered  by  the  world  about 
him,  which  in  turn  reacts  to  his  action,  and  so  on.  An 
interesting  passage  runs  thus : 

Our  highest  gift  from  God  and  nature  is  life,  the  rotary 
movement  of  the  monad  about  itself,  knowing  neither  haste 
nor  rest.  .  .  .  The  second  favor  of  the  higher  powers  is  expe- 
rience— the  living  and  moving  monad  noticing  and  taking  hold 
upon  its  environment,  thus  becoming  aware  of  itself  as  in- 


192  GOETHE 

wardly  boundless,  outwardly  limited.  .  .  .  The  third  factor  in 
the  development  is  the  action  or  deed  which  we  put  forth 
against  the  outer  world.  .  .  .  This  action  from  within  is  im- 
mediately followed  by  a  reaction,  whether  it  be  love  seeking  to 
further  or  hate  to  hinder. 


By  this  '  boundlessness '  of  the  individual  Goethe 
means  the  urge  of  passion,  desire,  instinct,  which  tend 
to  go  on  and  on,  like  motion  in  the  physical  world,  unless 
checked,  retarded,  or  changed  by  some  resisting  agent. 
The  outer  world  is  the  resisting  medium  which  receives 
the  impact  of  individual  effort.  His  commonest  name 
for  this  outward  push  of  the  individual  is  Strehen, 
'  striving,'  a  favorite  word  in  his  vocabulary.  '  Unlim- 
ited striving'  {Strehen  ins  Unhedingte)  is  the  indul- 
gence of  spontaneous  impulse  without  control  by  the  will. 
This  '  striving,'  ever  coming  into  conflict  with  the 
environment  (the  'conditions'  or  Bedingungen),  is  the 
root  of  all  virtue.  It  is  what  makes  Faust's  salvation 
possible. 

Thus  the  individual,  cribbed,  cabined,  and  confined 
by  the  conditions  of  his  environment,  is  forced  by  the 
very  nature  of  life  to  struggle  against  them.  Only  so 
can  he  maintain  his  own  being.  There  is  accordingly 
no  freedom  except  in  the  voluntary  acceptance  of  limi- 
tation. Its  meaning  for  Goethe  '  is  to  keep  oneself 
afloat  between  the  extremes  of  spontaneous  impulse  and 
the  universal  moral  norm,  and  each  moment,  as  it  were 
in  play,  to  restore  the  equilibrium.'  A  line  of  '  Tasso  ' 
lays  it  down  that  man  is  not  born  to  be  free.  The  pro- 
gram of  the  French  democracy  led  Goethe  to  a  formal 
demonstration  that  equality  and  freedom  can  not  co^ 
exist.     '  Legislators,'   he   observes,   '  who  promise   free- 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  193 

dom  and  equality  at  the  same  time  are  either  visionaries 
or  charlatans.' 

If  life  by  its  very  nature  is  a  conflict  of  opposing 
forces  it  follows  that  all  judgments  of  praise  and  blame 
must  be  relative  to  the  conditions.  I  can  not  arraign 
the  law  of  gravitation,  tho  it  slay  me,  for  it  makes  my 
life  possible.  To  condemn  any  man  utterly  is  to  con- 
demn the  constitution  of  the  universe.  The  bad  is  a 
condition  of  the  good,  as  pain  is  a  condition  of  joy. 
There  are  no  absolutes  anywhere.  The  Devil,  as  His 
Majesty's  Opposition,  is  a  necessary  and  duly  accredited 
factor  in  the  Lord's  government.  But  if  all  things, 
the  bad  along  with  the  good  and  the  ugly  along  with 
the  beautiful,  are  part  of  a  natural  order  of  conflict- 
ing forces,  what  basis  is  left  for  approving  or  disap- 
proving anything  whatever  ? 

To  this  question  I  suppose  Goethe  would  have  an- 
swered that  man  is  not  a  fighting  animal  by  virtue  of 
his  reason  or  his  logic.  Lie  does  not  really  know  why 
he  fights,  any  more  than  the  sparks  know  why  they  fly 
upward  or  the  leaf  knows  why  it  flutters  to  the  ground. 
Such  knowledge  of  ultimates  is  denied  him.  He  only 
knows  that  he  is  born  into  life  and  bidden  to  live.  This 
is  to  fight,  the  word  having  no  other  possible  mean- 
ing. To  refuse  to  fight  is  to  refuse  to  live.  But  in  fight- 
ing to  maintain  his  own  being  he  iiiiist  approve  this  and 
disapprove  that.  Such  is  in  part  his  way  of  fighting, 
and  he  can  not  do  otherwise  if  he  would.  He  must 
approve  and  fight  for  what  is  *  according  to  his  own 
nature ' — was  ihm  gem'dss  ist.  Goethe  once  wrote  to 
Zelter  that  '  moral  progress  consists  in  knowing  that 
life,  if  it  goes  well,  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  constant  fight- 


194  GOETHE 

ing  and  overcoming.'  Some  well-known  verses  assert 
that  to  '  maintain  oneself  against  all  powers  calls  the 
arms  of  the  gods  to  one's  aid.' 

But  while  Goethe  had  much  to  say  about  fighting  and 
regarded  it,  in  one  phase  or  another,  as  the  inevitable 
human  lot,  he  did  not  as  a  matter  of  fact  mean  much 
more  by  it  than  moralists  have  always  meant  by  the 
battle  of  life.  His  temperament  was  pacific,  contem- 
plative, in  the  main  judicial,  albeit  he  was  quite  capa- 
ble of  wrath  like  other  sons  of  Adam,  In  his  later  years 
he  laid  increasing  stress  on  the  virtue  of  poise  and  so 
got  the  reputation  of  setting  supreme  value  on  his  own 
serenity  of  mind.  The  Swedish  poet  Tegner  speaks 
of  him  as  *  Goethe  the  all  too  calm.'  But  his  attitude 
was  the  natural  outcome  of  his  whole  philosophy  of 
antagonistic  forces  that  ever  seek  an  equilibrium  yet 
never  find  it  except  for  brief  instants  of  time. 

The  Goethean  virtue  of  poise  or  equilibrium  is  the 
eighteenth  century  phase  of  the  old  Greek  doctrine  of 
*  nothing  in  excess.'  It  is  the  ideal  constantly  preached 
by  Wieland,  whose  thinking  was  much  influenced  by 
Shaftesbury's  conception  of  the  perfectly  balanced  '  vir- 
tuoso.' Sometimes  Goethe  used  the  term  *  gracioso ' 
for  his  ideal  exemplar  of  equilibrium  through  self-con- 
trol and  the  avoidance  of  excess.  This  is  what  he  meant 
by  '  beautiful  humanity,'  of  which  he  had  so  much  to 
say.  This  is  what  he  meant  by  the  famous  lines  of 
the  poem  '  General  Confession,'  where  men  are  bidden 
to  '  wean  themselves  from  the  half  and  live  resolutely 
in  the  whole,  the  beautiful,  the  good.' 

Beyond  a  doubt  this  idea  of  the  perfection  of  the 
individual  through  the  symmetrical  culture  of  all  his 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  195 

higher  human  aptitudes  and  the  maintenance  of  a  due 
equipoise  between  centripetal  or  selfish  impulse  on  the 
one  hand  and  centrifugal  or  altruistic  tendencies  on  the 
other, — beyond  a  doubt  this  is  Goethe's  last  and  highest 
word  in  ethics.  The  doctrine  lends  itself  readily  to  mis- 
construction and  indeed  has  often  been  misconstrued 
as  meaning  simply,  in  the  last  analysis,  a  sort  of  sub- 
limated selfishness.  But  the  sage  of  Weimar  knew  very 
well,  and  in  his  later  years  was  much  given  to  urging, 
that  the  perfection  of  the  individual  was  something 
realizable  only  in  the  give-and-take  of  social  effort.  After 
all,  self-surrender,  in  the  sense  of  devotion  to  large  ideas 
that  make  for  the  good  of  human  kind,  was  the  over- 
ruling law  of  self-realization. 

His  doctrine  of  duty  does  not  differ  from  that  of 
Kant  or  Fichte  by  its  less  strenuous  demand  or  its  more 
hedonistic  tinge,  but  by  its  underlying  assumption  that 
the  categorical  imperative  itself  was  made  for  man  and 
is  to  be  viewed  relatively  to  human  perfection.  A  man 
does  not  do  his  duty  because  God  commands  it,  but 
because  he  chooses  to  do  it  in  the  interest  of  his  own 
highest  welfare.  Bondage  to  duty,  he  would  have  said, 
is  no  better  than  any  other  bondage,  and  the  only  duty 
consists  in  '  loving  that  which  one  enjoins  on  oneself.* 
Naturally,  therefore,  he  would  have  rejected  the  tran- 
scendental state  with  its  imperious  claim  to  blind  service 
and  blind  self-sacrifice.  According  to  his  way  of  think- 
ing the  state  exists  for  man,  not  man  for  the  state.  No- 
where does  he  admit  any  higher  criterion  than  the  per- 
fection of  man,  who  must  seek  his  highest  good  in  the 
sweat  of  his  brow,  by  toil  and  moil,  amid  a  never-ending 
conflict  of  antagonistic  forces. 


196  GOETHE 

Never-ending  shall  we  say?  It  was  a  pious  belief  of 
Herder  that  the  cosmic  conflict  would  at  last  come  to 
a  permanent  equilibrium  in  a  transcendental  City  of 
God.  This  unthinkable  thought  was  certainly  no  essen- 
tial part  of  Goethe's  philosophy,  but  it  was  not  alien  to 
his  moods  of  mystic  longing  for  peace.  Witness  the 
lines : 

From  everywhere  streams  joy  of  life, 
From  greatest  star  and  tiniest, 
And  all  the  pressure,  all  the  strife, 
Is  the  Lord  God's  eternal  rest. 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  EVOLUTIONIST 


The  merit  of  Goethe  as  a  man  of  science  has  been 
much  debated.  The  Hterature  of  the  subject  is  mainly 
the  work  of  men  of  letters  or  men  of  literary  leanings, 
but  a  number  of  eminent  scientific  specialists  have  also 
contributed  to  it.  Thus,  to  mention  a  few  notable  names 
from  the  generation  contemporary  with  Darwin,  we  find 
Helmholtz,  Virchow,  Du  Bois-Reymond,  and  Haeckel 
all  on  record  as  to  the  relation  of  Goethe  to  the  doctrine 
of  evolution.     Helmholtz  wrote  in  1876: 

To  Goethe  belongs  the  great  glory  of  having  first  foreseen 
the  leading  ideas  toward  which  the  sciences  of  organic  nature 
were  tending,  and  by  which  the  subsequent  development  of 
those  sciences  has  been  determined. 

Six  years  later,  in  an  address  before  the  fifty-fifth 
congress  of  German  naturalists  and  physicians,  Haeckel 
rated  the  scientific  merits  of  Goethe  very  high,  declar- 
ing that  he  could  see  *  no  essential  difference  '  between 
Goethe's  philosophy  of  nature  and  '  our  modern  monistic 
philosophy  as  re-estabUshed  by  Darwin.'  On  the  other 
hand,  Du  Bois-Reymond,  in  an  address  delivered  on 
assuming  the  rectorship  of  the  University  of  Berlin  in 

197 


198  GOETHE 

1883,  took  the  ground  that  for  a  man  of  science  Goethe's 
mental  equipment  was  defective  in  one  important  par- 
ticular, namely,  the  sense  of  mechanical  causation.  He 
argued  that  Goethe's  views  were  essentially  different 
from  the  Darwinism  of  our,  or  rather  of  that,  day,  and 
that  what  he  did  in  a  scientific  way  was  at  best  of  small 
moment  and  would  hardly  be  missed  if  it  were  stricken 
from  the  record.  In  short,  Du  Bois-Reymond  would 
have  had  the  world  remember  that  the  poet  Goethe  was 
a  man  of  science  in  much  the  same  spirit  as  it  remembers 
that  Frederick  the  Great  was  a  poet. 

Now  it  is  plain  that  there  are  two  questions  here. 
One  relates  to  the  general  merit  of  Goethe  as  a  scien- 
tific worker,  the  other  to  the  nature  and  extent  of  his 
evolutionism.  The  former  is  a  question  for  scientific 
experts,  the  latter  a  question  for  any  one  who  chooses 
to  study  the  data  bearing  on  the  subject  and  to  inter- 
pret them  according  to  their  most  probable  meaning. 
Speaking  for  myself  as  the  humblest  of  laymen  in  nat- 
ural science,  I  incline  to  the  view  of  Du  Bois-Reymond 
with  regard  to  the  first  question.  For  it  does  not  appear 
that  Goethe's  work  in  any  scientific  field  whatever  nota- 
bly affected  the  course  of  subsequent  investigation.  Yet 
this  is  the  only  possible  test  of  merit  in  the  history  of 
science.  To  show  that  a  famous  poet  or  philosopher 
of  long  ago  had  in  his  head,  by  free  gift  of  the  gods, 
ideas  which  w^ere  afterwards  established  on  a  firm  basis 
by  the  labors  of  other  men  may  be  an  interesting  liter- 
ary diversion,  but  it  is  hardly  anything  more.  The  great 
man  in  the  history  of  science  is  the  one  who  fructified 
the  minds  of  other  men. 

Now  Goethe  never  did  that — never  '  made  school ' 


THE  EVOLUTIONIST  199 

or  set  anything  going  outside  his  own  mind.  Botanists  say 
that  his  work  has  been  of  Httle  use  to  their  science.  His 
discovery  of  the  intermaxillary  bone  in  man,  while  a 
genuine  discovery  for  him,  had  been  anticipated.  He 
was  not  the  first  to  recognize  the  homologies  of  the 
vertebrate  skeleton.  Modern  optics  is  nowise  indebted 
to  his  *  Theory  of  Color,'  while  geology  and  meteor- 
ology have  gone  their  way  as  if  he  had  never  lived. 
If  we  seek  a  reason  for  this  sterility  of  his  scientific 
labors  we  have  not  far  to  go.  It  was  not  so  much  that 
he  lacked  patience  for  the  '  dead  work '  of  science  as 
that  he  lacked  interest,  as  Du  Bois-Reymond  says,  in 
mechanical  causation.  The  science  of  our  day  is  con- 
cerned with  the  explanation  of  phenomena  as  directly 
caused  by  antecedent  phenomena,  and  no  other  kind 
of  explanation  is  deemed  worthy  of  the  name.  But 
Goethe  cared  little  for  mechanical  causation.  His  suf- 
ficient cause  was  the  mind  of  the  world-artist,  his  pur- 
suit the  idea.  His  theory  of  types  is  unworkable  because 
of  its  vagueness.  One  can  not  get  forward  with  it. 
Finally,  his  two  great  laws  of  polarity  and  ascent,  so 
far  as  they  are  laws,  are  a  description  rather  than  an 
explanation. 

But  with  all  this  admitted  it  is  still  worth  while  to 
look  somewhat  carefully  into  the  nature  and  extent  of 
his  evolutionism;  for  while  his  standing  as  a  forerun- 
ner of  Darwin  is  debatable,  there  can  be  no  doubt  what- 
ever that  he  was  an  evolutionist  in  a  quite  legitimate 
sense  of  the  term.  Furthermore,  his  evolutionism,  while 
it  has  made  little  difference  in  the  history  of  science,  made 
a  great  deal  of  difference  in  the  history  of  his  own 
mind  and  art.    It  affected  his  imaginative  work  to  some 


^00  GOETHE 

extent  and  is  vitally  bound  up  with  his  general  way  of 
thinking.  As  for  his  work  in  chromatics,  we  may  think 
all  that  away  from  the  sum  total  of  his  activity,  and 
what  remains  would  still  be  Goethe.  Not  so  with  his 
evolutionism. 

The  main  object  of  this  study  is  to  assemble  the  data 
bearing  on  the  subject,  that  they  may  tell  their  own  story. 

II 

As  we  have  seen  in  Chapter  IV,  Goethe's  active  con- 
cern with  science  began  with  mineralogy,  which  soon 
came  to  interest  him  mainly  for  its  bearing  on  broad 
questions  of  geologic  theory.  His  diary  and  correspond- 
ence show  how  eagerly  he  applied  himself  to  the  new 
pursuits  imposed  by  his  responsibility  for  the  Ilmenau 
mines.  He  visits  all  the  nooks  and  crannies  of  the  little 
state  in  order  to  study  its  geologic  features.  He  begins 
a  collection  of  minerals  and  tries  to  impart  his  enthu- 
siasm to  his  friends.  Wherever  he  goes  we  find  him 
knocking  at  the  rocks  and  returning  laden  with  treasures. 
'  I  am  now  living  body  and  soul  in  rock  and  mountain,' 
he  writes  in  September,  1 780,  '  and  am  delighted  with 
the  broad  prospects  that  are  opening  before  me.' 

By  1782,  as  appears  from  a  letter  to  Merck,  he  begins 
to  feel  something  of  assurance  with  respect  to  his  knowl- 
edge of  geology.  Shortly  after  this  botany  and  com- 
parative anatomy  begin  to  claim  a  portion  of  his  time, 
but  his  interest  in  his  former  studies  continues  unabated. 
In  1784  he  makes  a  journey  to  the  Harz  Mountains 
and  keeps  what  he  calls  a  '  geognostic  diary '  of  his 
travels.  He  prints  nothing  in  the  line  of  geology,  how- 
ever, until   1807,  after  which  we  have  a  considerable 


THE  EVOLUTIONIST  201 

number  of  short  contributions.  Some  are  mere  notes, 
others  are  book-reviews,  while  still  others  are  descrip- 
tions of  the  geologic  features  of  the  Karlsbad  region 
and  other  localities  that  he  had  visited.  The  only  inter- 
est they  have  now  is  in  their  incidental  deliverances  with 
regard  to  geologic  theory. 

Right  at  the  beginning  of  his  studies  Goethe  had 
accepted  the  erroneous  doctrine  of  Werner  that  granite 
is  the  foundation  of  the  earth's  crust,  and  that  other 
formations  are  always  of  later  origin,  having  been  super- 
imposed on  the  granite  in  the  form  of  deposits  from 
a  primeval  menstruum.  This  theory  he  soon  came  to 
look  on  as  impregnable,  so  that  granite  acquired  for 
him  a  quite  peculiar  sentimental  interest.  In  letters 
of  the  period  he  refers  to  himself  as  a  '  friend  of  gran- 
ite.' A  fixed  belief  in  the  primordial  character  of  that 
rock  estabhshed  itself  as  an  underlying  assumption  in 
all  his  speculations  concerning  the  sculpturing  of  moun- 
tain masses.  There  is  a  curious  fragment  of  his,  writ- 
ten probably  in  1784 — a  sort  of  prose  ode  to  granite. 
A  part  of  it  reads  thus : 

Sitting  on  a  high  and  naked  peak  and  gazing  over  a  wide 
expanse,  I  can  say  to  myself:  '  Here  thou  reposest  immediately 
on  a  foundation  which  reaches  down  to  the  deepest  places  of 
the  earth.  No  recent  layer,  no  heaps  of  debris  washed  together 
by  the  water,  have^ever  deposited  themselves  between  thee  and 
the  firm  ground-floor  of  the  primeval  world.  Here  thou  dost 
not,  as  in  those  beautiful  and  fruitful  valleys,  walk  over  a 
continual  grave;  these  peaks  have  never  begotten  and  never 
swallowed  up  any  living  thing;  they  are  before  all  life  and 
above  all  life.' 

With  such  ideas  in  his  head  as  the  basis  of  all  geo- 
logic wisdom  he  naturally   sided   with   the   Neptunists 


202  GOETHE 

when  the  famous  controversy  of  the  eighteenth  century 
broke  out.  The  evidence  seemed  to  him  conclusive  that 
nature's  process  in  shaping  the  hills  had  always  been 
a  quiet  and  leisurely  process.  To  this  conviction  he 
clung  tenaciously  and  finally  gave  it  expression  in 
*  Faust,'  where  the  Devil  speaks  for  the  Plutonists  while 
Faust  champions  the  other  side: 

When  Nature  in  herself  her  being  founded, 
Complete  and  perfect  then  the  globe  she  rounded, 
Glad  of  the  summits  and  the  gorges  deep, 
Set  rock  to  rock  and  mountain  steep  to  steep. 
The  hills  with  easy  outlines  downward  molded, 
Till  gently  from  their  feet  the  vales  unfolded. 
They  green  and  grow;  with  joy  therein  she  ranges, 
Requiring  no  insane,  convulsive  changes. 

It  was  Goethe's  way  to  work  to  the  utmost  an  idea 
that  had  once  taken  possession  of  him.  ;  Extending  the 
scope  of  his  geologic  doctrine  he  soon  came  to  believe 
that  nature's  characteristic  method  is  always  quiet  and 
leisurely — a  method  of  gradual  transformation  with- 
out breaks  and  without  barriers.  This  idea  became  one 
of  the  ruling  doctrines  of  his  life,  furnishing  him  not 
only  with  a  starting-point  for  scientific  study,  but  also 
with  a  rule  of  conduct  and  a  criterion  for  judging  the 
actions  of  men.  \  He  hated  the  Revolution  because  it 
was  a  sudden  and  violent  upheaval.  In  short,  reverence 
for  the  method  '  without  haste  but  without  rest '  became 
the  key-note  of  his  character. 

Like  the  rest  of  the  Neptunists,  Goethe  was  of  course 
aware  that  volcanoes  and  earthquakes  were  facts  in 
nature;  he  contended,  however,  that  such  agencies  must 
always  have  been  what  they  appear  to  be  at  any  par- 


THE  EVOLUTIONIST  203 

ticular  epoch,  namely,  something  sporadic  and  excep- 
tional. His  notion,  curious  as  it  sounds  when  stated, 
seems  to  have  been  that  violent  commotions  were  not 
a  part  of  nature's  process  but  interruptions  of  it.  In 
1788  Werner  claimed  an  aqueous  origin  for  basalt  and 
Goethe  regarded  the  case  as  made  out.  Some  of  the 
'  Xenia '  are  at  the  expense  of  the  Vulcanists,  whose 
cause  he  thought  lost  beyond  retrieval.  It  was  thus 
a  source  of  great  mental  disturbance  for  him  when,  in 
the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  catastrophic 
theories  more  or  less  similar  to  those  advocated  by  Hut- 
ton  began  to  win  influential  friends.  The  new  views, 
as  accepted  by  Von  Buch  and  Von  Humboldt  in  Ger- 
many and  by  De  Beaumont  in  France,  ran  counter  to 
his  inveterate  prejudice.  It  was  like  telling  him  that 
mother  Nature  was  after  all  unsteady  and  subject  to 
freaks.  The  matter  interested  him  deeply.  It  is  often 
referred  to  in  his  letters  and  minor  prose  writings  and 
is  woven  into  the  texture  of  the  Second  Part  of  '  Faust.' 
Each  side  is  represented  there  by  its  appropriate  cham- 
pion, but  the  Vulcanist  doctrine  is  given  a  slight  tinge 
of  burlesque  and  persiflage,  whereas  that  of  the  Nep- 
tunists  is  evidently  meant  to  be  taken  more  seriously. 

The  colloquies  in  '  Faust '  are  on  the  whole  serene 
enough,  but  Goethe  could  not  always  maintain  his  seren- 
ity when  dealing  with  this  topic.  In  an  outburst  penned 
not  very  long  before  his  death  he  vociferated: 

Be  the  case  as  it  may,  it  must  be  written  that  I  denounce 
this  accursed  racket  of  the  new  order  of  creation  [that  is,  the 
noisy  argument  of  those  who  would  make  nature's  orderly  work 
a  product  of  tumult  and  explosion].  Surely  some  young  man 
of  genius  will  arise  who  will  have  the  courage  to  oppose  this 
crazy  unanimity. 


204  GOETHE 

This  bold  and  confident  prediction  from  an  octo- 
genarian poet  is  in  itself  rather  striking  as  an  evidence 
of  the  man's  character,  but  it  becomes  still  more  re- 
markable when  we  remember  that  at  the  very  time  when 
these  words  were  being  penned  by  the  exasperated 
Altmeister  the  '  young  man  of  genius '  was  on  the  way. 
Sir  Charles  Lyell's  famous  book,  which  ushered  in  the 
new  era  of  bit-by-bit  geology,  appeared  in  1832. 

The  great  controversy  of  a  hundred  years  ago  has 
now  only  a  historical  interest,  the  advance  of  knowledge 
having  rendered  much  of  the  earlier  speculation  unten- 
able on  both  sides.  All  the  problems  are  stated  differ- 
ently now.  The  ideas  of  Goethe  were  certainly  far  from 
those  of  our  time,  yet  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  he 
was  nearer  to  them  than  the  most  of  his  contemporaries. 
He  had  started  from  a  false  theory  and  much  of  his 
reasoning  was  wrong  in  detail;  but  so  excellent  were 
his  powers  of  observation  and  so  perfect  was  his  intel- 
lectual balance,  that  he  was  able  to  reach  conclusions 
which,  to  some  extent,  have  stood  the  test  of  time. 

But  was  not  this  anticipation  largely  fortuitous — just 
a  lucky  accident  which  was  thus  and  might  have  been 
otherwise  ?  That  it  was  hardly  so  but  an  honest  triumph 
of  the  scientific  imagination  appears  probable  when  we 
pass  from  the  general  to  the  particular  and  consider 
his  prevision  of  the  coming  importance  of  paleontology 
and  his  theory  of  a  glacial  epoch.  '  The  growing  im- 
portance of  the  history  of  organic  remains,'  wrote  Sir 
Charles  Lyell,  '  may  be  pointed  to  as  the  characteristic 
feature  of  the  science  of  geology  during  the  present 
century.'  In  view  of  this  fact  no  small  interest  attaches 
to  a  letter  written  by  Goethe  to  Merck  October  27,  1782. 


THE  EVOLUTIONIST  205 

In  this  letter  he  sets  forth  his  theory  as  to  how  the  bones 
found  in  the  alluvial  plains  of  Europe  came  to  be  there 
and  argues  that  they  belong  to  a  recent  epoch  which 
is,  however,  in  comparison  with  our  ordinary  compu- 
tation of  time,  'prodigiously  remote.'  Then  he  adds: 
'  The  time  will  come  when  men  will  no  longer  jumble 
together  organic  remains,  but  will  arrange  them  with 
reference  to  the  world's  epochs.' 

This  might  seem  a  small  matter  and  from  one  point 
of  view  so  it  was.  Goethe  himself  never  followed  up  the 
idea  and  so  far  as  he  was  concerned  nothing  came  of 
it.  But  it  is  a  little  remarkable  that  such  an  idea  should 
have  been  in  his  mind  at  that  time,  since  it  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  in  any  one  else's.  Cuvier  and  William 
Smith  were  boys  of  thirteen,  and  the  older  geologists, 
regarding  their  science  as  the  handmaid  of  biblical  ortho- 
doxy, were  content  to  see  in  fossil  remains  at  once  the 
work  and  the  evidence  of  the  Noachian  deluge.  When 
one  reads  what  nonsense  men  of  ability  were  at  that 
time  still  capable  of  thinking,  Goethe's  isolated  idea  be- 
gins to  look  like  a  mental  achievement  of  some  dignity. 

His  relation  to  the  glacial  theory  may  be  quickly  de- 
scribed. He  early  speculated  about  the  erratic  boulders 
of  Germany  and  in  time  seems  to  have  accepted  the  view 
of  his  friend  Voigt  that  they  had  been  floated  in  from 
the  north  on  icebergs  in  the  time  of  the  primeval  ocean. 
Toward  the  end  of  his  life,  however,  we  find  him  in 
possession  of  a  different  theory  to  the  effect  that  long 
ago,  at  a  time  when  North  Central  Europe  had  been  cov- 
ered with  deep  water,  an  epoch  of  '  great  cold  '  had  set 
in,  and  that  the  phenomena  of  glacial  action  had  then 
manifested  themselves  on  a  large  scale  in  Germany.    This 


2o6  GOETHE 

idea  is  first  recorded  in  a  passage  of  '  Wilhelm  Meister's 
Wanderings  '  which  is  known  to  have  reached  its  final 
form  in  1829.  It  is  also  formulated  in  an  essay  entitled 
*  Geologic  Problems  and  their  Solution/  first  printed 
in  1833. 

Thus  we  see  that  Goethe  was  dreaming  of  primeval 
ice-fields  at  least  a  decade  before  Agassiz,  attracted  by 
the  work  of  Charpentier,  built  his  lone  hut  on  the  Aar 
Glacier  and  began  the  series  of  investigations  which  re- 
sulted in  opening  up  so  many  a  new  vista  in  modern 
geology.  Both  Charpentier  and  Agassiz  acknowledged 
the  priority  of  Goethe  in  this  line  of  speculation. 

Ill 

Let  us  now  follow  the  history  of  his  thinking  on  the 
development  of  living  forms.  The  starting-point  was  in 
the  exigencies  of  horticulture  at  Weimar.  In  1782  we 
find  the  busy  poet-minister  reading  the  botanical  writings 
of  Rousseau  and  'taking  a  taste*  of  Linne.  In  1785 
he  is  examining  seeds  under  the  microscope.  About  this 
time  Linne  becomes  his  '  daily  study  ' ;  he  exerts  himself 
to  master  the  Linnean  terminology,  and  a  compendium 
of  the  great  Swedish  naturalist's  system  accompanies  him 
pn  all  his  travels.  In  the  summer  of  1785  he  spends 
several  weeks  at  Karlsbad  and  there,  in  the  society  of 
helpful  friends,  his  botanical  studies  make  good  progress. 
One  day  he  comes  on  an  area  covered  with  the  drosera 
and  is  led  to  make  further  observations  on  the  '  irritabil- 
ity '  of  plants.  But,  as  might  be  supposed,  these  studies 
were  at  first  little  more  than  the  *  analysis  *  of  plants  and 
flowers.  The  science  consisted  in  dissecting  a  flower 
and  ascertaining  what  Latin  name  Linne  had  seen  fit  to 


THE  EVOLUTIONIST  207 

give  it.  In  this  procedure  he  complacently  claims  to  have 
acquired  some  skill,  but  he  was  not  enthusiastic  about 
it,  for  the  reason,  as  he  shrewdly  remarks,  that  '  cutting 
up  and  counting  did  not  lie  in  his  nature.'  In  this  same 
connection  he  observes,  without  explicitly  making  the 
opinion  referred  to  his  own,  that  *  we  were  often  com- 
pelled to  hear  the  objection  that  the  whole  science  of 
botany,  to  which  we  were  so  devoted,  was  nothing  but 
nomenclature;  that  it  was  a  system  built  on  numbers, 
imperfect  at  that,  and  as  such  could  satisfy  neither  the 
understanding  nor  the  imagination.' 

On  his  return  to  Weimar  botany  interests  him  more 
than  ever.  He  carefully  studies  Linne's  '  Botanical  Phi- 
losophy '  and  seeks  instruction  from  specialists  of  his 
acquaintance.  Presently,  as  we  can  see  from  his  letters, 
a  great  idea,  or  what  he  takes  to  be  such,  has  begun  to 
float  vaguely  before  his  mind.  The  earliest  attempts  to 
describe  it  are  misty  and  poetic,  but  gradually  it  becomes 
clearer,  giving  him  inexpressible  pleasure.  On  July  10, 
1786,  he  writes  to  Charlotte  von  Stein,  then  the  confi- 
dant of  all  his  thoughts: 

If  I  could  only  impart  to  another  my  vision  and  my  delight, 
but  it  is  impossible.  And  it  is  no  dream,  no  fancy;  it  is  a 
discernment  of  the  essential  form  with  which  nature  continually 
plays,  as  it  were,  and  in  playing  brings  forth  the  manifold 
forms  of  life. 

In  September,  1786,  he  takes  sudden  flight  to  Italy  and 
his  *  botanical  whimsies '  follow  him  over  the  Alps. 
Wherever  he  goes  the  vegetation  of  Italy  divides  his 
attention  with  poetry  and  the  plastic  arts.  September 
26  he  writes  from  Padua : 


2o8  GOETHE 

It  is  delightful  and  instructive  to  wander  about  amid  a 
strange  vegetation.  .  .  .  Here  in  this  novel  variety  the  thought 
becomes  more  vivid  that  all  plant  forms  might  perhaps  be  de- 
veloped from  a  single  one. 

Soon  his  mind  is  full  of  this  UrpHanze  or  archetypal 
plant,  and  he  commences  looking  for  it,  at  first  actually 
expecting  to  find  it  in  nature.  This  quest  he  soon  gives 
up,  however,  and  the  typical  plant  becomes  for  him  only 
an  imaginary  morphological  norm.  In  1787,  while  he 
is  in  Sicily,  it  suddenly  flashes  on  him  that  the  yajripus 
organs  of  a  plant  are  essentially  identical,  that  is, _. are 
variations  of  the  same  thing.  This  idea  he  follows  up 
eagerly  and  develops  it  in  an  essay,  the  '  Metamorphosis 
of  Plants,'  which  was  published  in  1790 — the  poet's  first 
actual  contribution  to  scientific  literature.  The  paper  is 
small  in  compass  and  very  modest  in  its  tone.  Its  lan- 
guage aims  to  be  scientific,  but  is  in  reality  often  highly 
figurative  and  poetic.  Its  substance  is  a  development  of 
the  thesis  that  cotyledon,  leaf,  sepal,  petal,  stamen,  and 
pistil  are  progressive  transformations  of  a  single  organ. 

But  now,  before  we  consider  what  this  theory  of  the 
typical  plant  and  of  metamorphosis  meant  to  its  pro- 
pounder,  a  few  words  must  be  devoted  to  his  analogous 
speculations  with  regard  to  animal  morphology. 

It  was  in  1781  that  he  began  taking  formal  lessons  in 
anatomy  with  Professor  Loder  at  Jena.  The  next  year 
we  find  him  collecting  skeletons  and  observing  their 
homologies.  Prominent  anatomists  like  Blumenbach, 
Sommerring,  and  Camper,  taught  that  a  fixed  morpholog- 
ical distinction  between  man  and  brute  was  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  the  latter  invariably  has  the  intermaxillary 
bone,  whereas  the  former  invariably  lacks  it.     Goethe 


THE  EVOLUTIONIST  209 

soon  became  convinced  that  any  such  distinction  must  be 
illusory.  Could  it  be  that  nature,  whose  method  was  that 
of  gradual  transition  from  one  form  to  another,  without 
breaks  and  without  barriers,  had  here  broken  the  usual 
continuity  and  interposed  an  impassable  barrier  in  the 
shape  of  an  unfailing  and  absolute  distinction?  He  felt 
that  the  integrity  of  his  whole  philosophy  of  nature  de- 
pended on  his  finding  an  intermaxillary  bone  in  man. 
So  he  went  to  work  with  his  friend  Loder  and  in  the 
spring  of  1784  found  what  he  was  looking  for.  Special- 
ists were  slow  in  admitting  his  claims,  but  in  time  it  was 
seen  that  he  was  right. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  the  present  purpose  to  consider 
how  far  these  ideas  of  Goethe  had  already  been  formu- 
lated by  others  or  to  trace  in  any  detail  the  subsequent 
history  of  his  morphological  studies.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  the  ideas  were  original  for  him  if  not  with  him  in 
the  fullest  sense  of  the  word.  What  he  wrote  afterwards, 
not  inconsiderable  in  amount,  is  only  a  working  out  of 
the  germinal  conceptions  already  described.  The  ques- 
tion of  interest  here  is :  What  did  these  conceptions  in- 
volve ?  Or,  to  what  extent  were  they  in  line  with  modern 
evolutionary  doctrine? 

IV 

The  answer  to  our  inquiry  must  turn  largely  on  the 
meaning  attached  by  Goethe  to  certain  words  which  occur 
frequently  in  his  writings,  namely,  UrpHanze,  Urtier, 
Urbild,  Typus,  Schema.  The  question  is,  of  course,  not 
so  much  what  these  words  denote  in  ordinary  usage,  but 
what  they  actually  connoted  for  him.  Some  writers  argue 
that  Goethe's  idea  was  only  a  metaphysical  abstraction 


2IO  GOETHE 

involving  no  hypothesis  of  descent  whatever.  And  un- 
doubtedly there  is  room  for  debate  since  the  language 
employed  is  sometimes  equivocal.  Take  for  example  the 
following  passage : 

This,  then,  we  have  no  hesitation  in  maintaining :  that  all  the 
more  perfect  organisms,  among  them  fishes,  amphibians,  birds, 
mammals,  and  at  the  head  of  these  last  man,  are  all  formed 
after  one  archetype  (nach  Einem  Urbilde)  that  simply  varies 
(hin  und  her  weicht)  more  or  less  and  is  continually  devel- 
oping and  transforming  itself  through  propagation  (durch 
Fortpflansung). 

In  this  utterance  some  see  all  the  essentials  of  modern 
evolution,  while  others  think  it  means  nothing  more  than 
if  one  were  to  say  of  half  a  dozen  statues  of  Venus 
that  they  were  all  formed  after  one  type.  This  language 
certainly  would  not  imply  that  they  were  all  the  children 
of  one  parent.  In  fact,  the  very  notion  of  descent  from 
an  archetype  is  an  absurdity.  But  without  the  idea  of 
descent  Goethe's  theory  has  no  resemblance  to  the  evolu- 
tionary doctrine  of  today  and  belongs  to  metaphysics  or 
esthetics  rather  than  to  natural  science. 

With  regard  to  the  theory  of  metamorphosis  similar 
views  have  been  expressed.  Thus  the  eminent  botanist 
Sachs  was  of  the  opinion  that  Goethe's  '  type  '  had  no 
connotation  of  descent.  He  would  have  us  believe  that 
Goethe,  scrutinizing  the  organs  of  certain  plants  and 
observing  curious  resemblances  of  form,  simply  sub- 
sumed the  current  names  of  the  organs  under  the  one 
name  of  '  leaf.'  If  this  were  all  we  should  have  nothing 
more  than  a  feat  of  name-giving.  It  would  be  much  as 
if  one  were  to  pick  up  half  a  dozen  pebbles  more  or  less 
similar  in  shape  and  select  one  of  them  to  be  the  archc" 


THE  EVOLUTIONIST  211 

typal  pebble  from  which  the  others  were  to  be  regarded 
as  morphological  variations. 

Is  this  then  all  that  Goethe  meant  with  his  Typiis,  his 
Urhild,  and  his  doctrine  of  metamorphosis?  I  can  not 
think  that  it  was.  There  are  too  many  passages  in  his 
writings  that  are  irreconcilable  with  such  a  view,  or  with 
any  other  view  than  that  there  lay  in  his  mind — perhaps 
it  would  be  better  to  say  that  his  mind  often  toyed  with 
— a  genuine  hypothesis  of  descent.  Otherwise  he  would 
hardly  have  said  that  the  happiest  moments  of  his  life 
were  connected  with  his  studies  in  plant-metamorphosis. 
'No  doubt  the  hypothesis  was  vaguely  held;  perhaps  it 
would  be  better  not  to  use  the  word  hypothesis  at  all 
for  that  which  w^as  after  all  merely  an  imagined  possi- 
bility which  he  never  undertook  to  prove  or  to  work  out 
mentally  in  all  its  tremendous  implications. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  he  was  much  more  interested 
in  the  forms  he  saw,  and  in  their  purely  morphological 
relation  to  other  forms,  than  in  their  immediate  or  remote 
parentage.  He  never  tells  us  how  many  and  what 
Urhilder  he  finds  it  convenient  to  assume,  and  it  must 
be  remembered  that  his  own  studies  were  confined  to  a 
comparatively  small  range  of  phenogamous  plants  and 
vertebrate  animals.  He  makes  no  serious  attempt  to 
answer  the  many  difficult  questions  which  a  hypothesis 
of  descent  raises.  He  dilates  often,  it  is  true,  on  the 
variability  of  specific  and  generic  distinctions,  but  he 
dilates  also  on  the  apparent  fixity  of  species  and  genera, 
and  nowhere  does  he  intimate  that  the  variability  which 
he  was  so  much  interested  in  is  sufficient  to  account  for 
the  origin  of  genera  and  species.  Probably  he  would 
have  said — though  he   nowhere  does  say  so — that  to 


212  GOETHE 

prove  a  hypothesis  of  descent  would  be  impossible,  since 
no  one  could  get  back  to  the  beginning  of  things.  In 
short,  his  mind  overleaped  and  ignored  the  difficult  de- 
tails of  the  genetic  hypothesis. 

Nevertheless,  after  much  study  of  the  many  passages 
of  his  writings  that  refer  to  the  subject,  I  can  not  doubt 
that  a  vague  hypothesis  of  descent  was  often  floating 
before  his  mind.  Almost  from  the  first  awakening  of 
his  interest  in  science  the  kinship  of  man  with  the  lower 
animals  is  a  familiar  thought.  In  November,  1784,  we 
find  him  writing  in  so  many  words  that  *  man  is  most 
closely  akin  to  the  animals.'  Among  the  high  blessings 
for  which  the  grateful  Faust  returns  thanks  to  the  Earth- 
spirit  is  the  sense  of  brotherhood  with  all  living  things : 

The  ranks  of  living  creatures  thou  dost  lead 
Before  me,  teaching  me  to  know  my  brothers 
In  air  and  water  and  the  silent  wood. 

This  passage  of  '  Faust '  was  probably  written  in  1788. 
In  a  letter  of  Frau  von  Stein,  written  somewhat  earlier 
to  Knebel,  occurs  this  sentence :  '  Herder's  new  work 
[the  '  Ideas '  is  referred  to]  makes  it  probable  that  we 
were  once  plants  and  animals.'  Now  this  idea  in  any 
such  explicit  form  is  not  found  in  Herder,  and  it  is  quite 
certain  that  Frau  von  Stein  did  not  originate  it.  Prob- 
ably she  had  it  from  Goethe.  And  how  can  we  under- 
stand such  language  as  the  following  if  we  eliminate  the 
notion  of  descent? 

Nature  can  compass  her  purpose  only  in  sequence.  She  makes 
no  jumps.  She  could  not,  for  example,  produce  a  horse,  had 
not  all  the  other  animals  preceded  on  which,  as  a  ladder,  she 
ascends  to  the  structure  of  the  horse. 


THE  EVOLUTIONIST  213 

Highly  significant  too  in  this  connection  is  the  episode 
of  Homunculus  in  the  Second  Part  of  *  Faust.'  Ho- 
munculus  is  a  mind  without  a  body  and  his  great  aspira- 
tion is  to  '  begin  existence/  that  is  to  acquire  a  body  and 
so  become  a  genuine  '  homo.'  He  accordingly  takes  ex- 
pert advice  as  to  how  and  where  he  can  best  do  this. 
As  a  result  he  dashes  his  glass  house  against  the  throne 
of  Galatea  and  dissolves  himself  with  the  phosphorescent 
sea,  there  to  come  up  in  the  lapse  of  eons  through  the 
stages  of  ameba,  polyp,  fish,  reptile,  mammal,  to  the  estate 
of  man.  In  the  fable  Galatea  represents  the  Goddess  of 
Love,  who  is  going  to  preside  over  each  stage  of  his  up- 
ward progress.    The  symbolism  is  perfectly  transparent. 

But  it  will  be  said  that  this  is  poetry.  Is  there,  then, 
in  plain  and  unequivocal  prose  any  evidence  of  Goethe's 
attitude  on  the  fundamental  articles  of  the  modern  evolu- 
tionist's faith?  We  have  seen  that  he  early  accustomed 
his  mind  to  operate  with  very  long  periods  of  time.  With 
respect  to  the  mutability  of  specific  distinctions  he 
writes  thus: 

The  changeableness  of  plant  forms  which  I  had  long  been 
observing  awakened  in  me  the  idea  that  the  forms  about  us 
were  not  originally  fixed  and  determined,  but  that  there  had 
been  given  to  them,  along  with  a  singular  tenacity  of  generic 
and  specific  character,  a  fortunate  mobility  and  flexibility  by 
which  they  had  been  able  to  accommodate  themselves  to  such 
manifold  terrestrial  conditions,  and  to  form  and  transform 
themselves  accordingly. 

Elsewhere  he  writes  on  the  same  subject: 

If  now  we  look  for  the  occasion  of  this  manifold  adaptability 
(Bestimmbarkeit)  this  is  to  be  said  first  of  all:  Animals  are 
formed  by  circumstances;  hence  their  inner  perfection  and 
their  adaptation  to  external  circumstances. 


214  GOETHE 

Concerning  teleological  explanations  he  has  this  clear 
and  decisive  expression  of  opinion: 

The  question  to  be  asked  hereafter  concerning  such  members 
as,  for  example,  the  tusks  of  sus  bahirussa,  will  not  be.  What 
are  they  good  for?  but,  Whence  came  they?  It  will  not  be 
said  that  the  bull  has  been  given  horns  that  he  may  gore  with 
them,  but  the  question  will  be  raised,  How  came  he  to  have 
horns  for  goring? 

Even  the  struggle  for  existence  and  its  effects  in 
certain  specific  cases  had  been  observed  by  him,  tho 
there  is  no  evidence  that  he  had  any  adequate  notion  of 
the  importance  of  the  subject.  To  sum  up  without 
further  multiplying  quotations:  The  kinship  of  living 
organisms,  the  descent  of  man  from  lower  orders  of 
life,  mutability  of  specific  distinctions,  progressive  adap- 
tation of  organisms  to  external  conditions,  the  struggle 
for  existence — all  these  ideas  Goethe  certainly  had.  What 
he  did  not  have  was  the  doctrine  of  natural  selection  and 
the  vast  array  of  observed  facts  which  have  since  taken 
this  whole  subject  out  of  the  hands  of  poetic  and  philo- 
sophic generalizers  and  given  it  over  to  a  generation  of 
investigators  with  whose  methods  Goethe,  could  he  re- 
turn to  our  planet,  would  probably  have  but  scant  sym- 
pathy. For  cutting  up  and  counting  lay  not  in  his  nature 
and  he  had  a  rooted  prejudice  against  the  *  levers  and 
screws '  of  the  laboratory. 

Mysterious  in  open  day. 
Veiled  Nature  spurns  thy  violent  endeavors; 
She  tells  her  secret  to  thy  mind  in  her  own  way, 
If  not — of  no  avail  are  all  thy  screws  and  levers. 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  BELIEVER 

I  GIVE  this  title  to  a  chapter  on  Goethe's  religion 
because  for  him  religion  was  mainly,  at  least  in  his  later 
years,  a  matter  of  transcendental  belief.  For  other  men 
it  has  other  aspects  which  will  hardly  concern  us  at  all, 
.Looked  at  in  a  large  historical  survey  religion  may  be 
conceived  as  a  four-sided  pyramid  one  side  of  which  is 
cult,  a  second  theology,  a  third  ethics,  and  the  fourth 
mystic  emotion.  To  be  sure,  this  gives  us  but  an  im- 
perfect account  of  the  subject,  for  the  various  aspects  of 
religion  overlap  and  interblend  more  or  less.  Still,  these 
are  undeniably  its  four  principal  phases.  Most  men  see 
one  side  of  the  pyramid,  or  perhaps  get  an  oblique  view 
of  two,  and  imagine  they  have  seen  it  all.  A  scholar 
will  take  care  to  look  at  all  the  four  sides  before  he  under- 
takes to  say  just  what  religion  in  its  vital  essence  is. 

Now  Goethe  knew  very  well  of  this  four-sidedness,  but 
three  of  the  sides  did  not  interest  him.  For  cult,  which 
now  appears  to  have  been,  in  the  form  of  sacrifice,  ritual, 
and  obedience  to  tabu,  religion's  most  primitive  aspect, 
he  hardly  cared  at  all.  He  was  not  in  the  least  ecclesi- 
astically minded.  He  seldom  went  to  church  and  took 
at  the  most  only  a  mild  esthetic  interest  in  forms  and 
ceremonies  of  worship.  Nor  had  he  any  affinity  for 
theology   as  a  body  of   doctrine   claiming   intellectual 

215 


2i6  GOETHE 

allegiance.  The  creeds,  dogmas,  propositions,  and  proofs 
left  him  quite  unconcerned.  As  to  his  conduct,  he  never 
professed  to  regulate  it  by  religious  motives  or  inhibi- 
tions. On  the  other  hand,  he  was  deeply  sensitive  to  the 
mystic  aspect  of  religion.  A  feeling  for  the  Divine, 
which  he  did  not  often  attempt  to  rationalize,  holding 
that  it  needed  no  proofs  and  was  better  than  proofs,  was 
early  and  permanently  rooted  in  his  nature.  In  short,  he 
was  a  Believer — not  in  cult,  creed,  or  '  mere  morality/ 
but  in  the  Divine. 

This  by  way  of  general  preliminary  statement.     Some 
necessary  qualifications  will  appear  as  we  proceed. 


It  is  probable  that  serious  thinking  on  the  subject  of 
religion  began  for  Goethe  when  he  was  about  nineteen 
years  old.  The  childhood  experiences  related  in  '  Poetry 
and  Truth  '  can  hardly  have  left  any  very  deep  mark. 
He  tells  how,  finding  the  God  of  the  orthodox  too  remote 
for  his  liking,  he  built  him  an  altar  in  Old  Testament 
fashion,  that  he  might  have  a  God  of  his  own — one  with 
whom  he  could  come  into  personal  relations.  But  such 
play  of  imaginative  boyhood  is  common  enough  and 
usually  has  no  special  significance.  What  is  more  im- 
portant is  that  the  boy  Wolfgang  was  brought  up  in  a 
religious  atmosphere.  He  read  the  bible  a  great  deal. 
His  mother  had  a  strong  leaning  to  pietism.  He  early 
learned  the  current  doctrines  of  the  church,  became 
familiar  with  the  Christian  scheme,  heard  much  talk 
about  it,  and  had  his  difficulties  over  God's  benevolence, 
as  did  older  folk  after  the  great  Lisbon  earthquake.  But 
all  this  sat  lightly  on  him.    When  he  was  ready  for  the 


THE  BELIEVER  217 

university  the  bent  of  his  mind  was  altogether  secular. 
Nor  is  there  a  hint  in  any  of  his  numerous  letters  from 
Leipsic  that  religion  was  then  occupying  his  thoughts. 

It  was  his  grave  illness  of  the  year  1768  that  first 
brought  the  subject  home  to  him  as  a  personal  affair. 
Confined  to  his  room,  menaced  by  death,  as  he  at  times 
thought,  tenderly  ministered  to  by  distressed  women  of 
the  pietistic  persuasion  and  by  a  doctor  who  believed  in 
the  occult,  he  took  stock  of  life  as  he  had  never  done 
before.  The  books  that  he  read  at  this  time  were  of  no 
spiritual  use  to  him,  albeit  they  filled  his  mind  with  ideas, 
partly  religious,  that  afterwards  came  into  play  in 
'  Faust.'  He  attended  the  prayer-meetings  of  the  local 
pietists  and  took  part  in  their  communion  service.  It 
was  a  normal  case  of  '  conversion '  save  that  there  was 
no  agonizing  over  the  safety  of  his  soul,  no  conviction  of 
sin.  He  was  quite  cheerful,  feeling  sure  that  his  God 
would  take  care  of  him. 

In  what  frame  of  mind  these  experiences  left  him 
when  he  was  well  enough  to  leave  home  appears  from  his 
letters.  One  of  them,  written  April  13,  1770,  says  that 
he  is  as  he  was,  except  that  he  is  on  a  '  somewhat  better 
footing  with  our  Lord  God  and  his  dear  son  Jesus 
Christ.'  A  few  days  later  he  thanks  his  Savior  that  he 
is  not  what  he  ought  to  be,  and  cites  Luther,  who  was 
more  afraid  of  his  good  v^orks  than  of  his  sins.  On 
July  28  he  writes  thus : 


Reflections  are  a  petty  merchandise.  With  prayer,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  is  good  business  to  be  done.  A  single  up- 
welling  of  the  heart  in  the  name  of  Him  whom  for  the  time 
being  we  call  a  Lord,  until  we  are  able  to  call  Him  our  Lord, 
and  we  are  overwhelmed  with  countless  benefactions. 


2i8  GOETHE 

This  is  the  simple  faith  of  the  Christian  mystic.  It 
is  grounded  solely  on  personal  experience — a  rapturous 
emotion  felt  to  be  communion  with  God.  Strictly  speak- 
ing it  is  not  faith  at  all,  and  is  not  grounded,  so  far  as 
these  words  connote  anything  intellectual.  It  simply  is 
— like  any  other  up-welling  emotion.  The  mind  is  not 
engaged.  Of  course  it  needs  no  sanction  of  logic,  for  it 
does  not  come  within  the  sphere  of  the  syllogism.  It 
has  no  need  of  symbol,  mediator,  ceremony,  or  appliance 
of  worship.  It  is  worship.  Its  '  justification '  is  like 
that  of  any  other  pleasant  emotional  indulgence.  It 
makes  one  feel  good  and  dream  pleasant  dreams. 

^What  happened  in  the  case  of  Goethe  was  that  he  soon 
tired  of  his  pietistic  friends,  partly  because  they  were 
such  dull  and  narrow  folk,  and  partly,  it  would  seem, 
because  they  talked  too  much  to  suit  him  about  the  par- 
ticularities of  the  heavenly  life.  He  was  more  inter- 
ested in  this  world;  speculation  about  the  exact  modus  of 
an  imaginary  life  behind  the  veil  seemed  to  him  as  futile 
as  were  the  proofs  unnecessary.  Meanwhile  the  intellect 
was  there,  with  its  insistent  questionings;  it  was  not  to 
be  put  down,  since  a  man  could  not  live  all  the  time  on 
the  hights  of  emotional  ecstasy.  Gradually  the  idea  took 
root  in  his  mind  that  the  symbols  and  intermediaries  of 
worship,  as  well  as  the  proofs  from  analogy,  from  as- 
sumed premises,  or  from  written  revelation — that  all 
these  were  a  sort  of  lower  surrogate  for  real  religion. 
They  were  not  to  be  rejected  or  even  quarreled  about, 
but  welcomed  as  useful,  so  far  as  they  might  aid  the 
up-welling  of  love  from  the  heart.  They  were  to  be 
accepted  as  the  hungry  man  accepts  roots  and  herbs  when 
no  better  food  is  to  be  had.    If  they  did  not  truly  upbuild 


THE  BELIEVER  219 

and  nourish  the  spirit  in  love;  if  they  provoked  hate, 
contentiousness,  and  pride  of  opinion,  they  were  of  evil. 

This  is  a  religious  attitude  which  differs  from  the  cur- 
rent deism  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  that  God  is  not 
thought  of  as  the  distant  ruler  of  a  mechanistic  universe, 
to  whom  prayer  would  be  either  useless  or  else  a  merely 
formal  act  of  homage,  but  rather  as  the  Immanent  Love, 
with  whom  the  creature  is  united  in  and  by  love.  And 
it  differs  from  the  theism  of  all  the  centuries  in  that  it 
lays  little  stress  on  creed,  dogma,  proof,  and  revelation. 
It  regards  these  things  at  the  best  as  props. 

Such  is  the  substance  of  doctrine  set  forth  in  that 

curious  *  Letter  of  Pastor '  published  by  Goethe  in 

the  year  1772.  The  fiction  is  that  the  letter  is  written  by 
an  elderly  clergyman  to  a  young  colleague  who  has  just 
been  called  to  a  neighboring  parish  as  successor  to  a 
highly  contentious  pastor  now  gone  to  his  reward.  The 
old  pastor  hopes  that  the  new  man  will  avoid  contention. 
He  is  not  to  argue  with  unbelievers,  lest  he  be  discom- 
fited, but  to  let  them  go  their  way.  He  is  to  be  infinitely 
tolerant,  yet  not  indifferent ;  unshakable  in  his  own  faith, 
yet  ready  to  believe  that  God  will  find  ways  to  save  even 
skeptics  and  mockers.  *  What  a  joy  to  think  that  the 
Turk  who  takes  me  for  a  dog,  and  the  Jew  who  takes 
me  for  a  swine  will  one  day  be  glad  to  be  my  brothers.' 
The  creeds  are  provisional  formulas,  the  eucharist  a 
symbol  for  the  senses.  Uniformity  of  beliefs  and  sym- 
bols is  not  desirable.  '  We  are  all  Christians,  and  Augs- 
burg and  Dortrecht  make  no  more  difference  in  religion 
than  France  and  Germany  in  the  nature  of  men.'  The 
ultimate  mysteries  are  never  to  be  argued  about,  since  no 
man  can  understand  them.     The  essence  of  the  whole 


220  GOETHE 

matter  is  love  and  the  belief  in  love.     The  old  pastor 
formulates  his  creed  thus: 

I  regard  the  belief  in  the  divine  love,  which  so  many  years 
ago  went  about  on  a  bit  of  the  earth  as  a  man  under  the  name 
of  Jesus  Christ,  as  the  one  foundation  of  my  blessedness;  and 
that  is  what  I  tell  my  people  as  often  as  there  is  opportunity. 
I  do  not  subtilize  the  matter;  for  as  God  became  man  in  order 
that  we  poor  creatures  of  sense  might  lay  hold  of  and  com- 
prehend Him,  we  must  take  particular  care  not  to  make  Him 
God  again. 

A  review  of  Haller's  '  Letters  on  the  most  Important 
Truths  of  Revelation,'  published  in  1772,  contains  this 
passage : 

But  we  submit  to  all  fanatics  on  both  sides  whether  it  is  a 
fitting  idea  of  the  Supreme  Being  to  treat  every  mode  of  con- 
ceiving him  and  of  man's  relation  to  him  as  an  affair  of  God, 
and  hence  to  maintain  in  a  spirit  of  persecution  that  what  God 
wishes  to  have  us  regard  as  good  and  evil  is  actually  good  and 
evil  in  His  sight;  and  whether  that  which  for  our  eye  is 
broken  into  two  colors  may  not  return  to  Him  in  a  single  ray 
of  light.  Anger  and  forgiveness  in  an  unchangeable  being  are 
truly  but  a  mode  of  conceiving  Him.  We  all  agree  in  this  that 
a  man  should  do  what  we  all  call  good,  whether  his  soul  be  a 
dirty  puddle  or  a  mirror  of  nature's  beauty;  whether  he  have 
the  strength  to  go  on  his  way,  or  be  sick  and  in  need  of  a 
crutch.     Crutch  and  strength  are  from  one  hand. 

Another  review  ends  with  a  shaft  at  those  who  make 
of  Christ  a  morose  tyrant,  ever  ready  with  the  thunder- 
bolt of  his  wrath  when  he  does  not  find  absolute  perfec- 
tion. '  We  must  say  it  because  it  has  long  lain  on  our 
heart,  that  Voltaire,  Hume,  La  Mettrie,  Helvetius, 
Rousseau,  and  all  their  kind  have  done  far  less  harm  to 
religion  than  the  strict,  morbid  Pascal  and  his  school.' 


THE  BELIEVER  221 


II 


It  appears  from  all  this  that  by  the  time  he  was  ready 
for  '  Werther  '  and  '  Faust '  Goethe  had  worked  out  for 
himself  a  purely  emotional  religion  whose  starting-point 
had  been  the  mystic  exaltation  of  prayer.  He  regarded 
this  religion  as  containing  the  pure  essence  of  Christian- 
ity and  himself  therefore  as  a  good  Christian.  He  habit- 
ually used  the  terms  of  the  Christian  religion.  He  was 
of  course  well  aware  of  his  heterodoxy  but  doxies  did  not 
interest  him.  Neither  did  sin.  His  God  had  made  nature 
as  it  is — including  human  nature — sinners  as  well  as 
saints.  All  were  His  children  and  He  would  take  care 
of  them.  He  was  the  Eternal  Pardoner.  Secure  in  his 
heretical  faith  he  did  not  care  to  give  it  a  name  or  to 
make  proselytes.  Yet  he  was  mildly  impatient — rather 
inconsistently,  since  the  proselyter  too  is  a  child  of  God, 
— with  those  who  tried  to  proselyte  him.  Perhaps  the 
best  account  of  his  way  of  thinking  on  the  subject  of 
proselyting  is  contained  in  a  letter  of  April  26,  1774, 
to  a  man  named  Pfenninger : 

Thank  you,  dear  brother,  for  your  warm  solicitude  about 
your  brother's  spiritual  welfare.  Believe  me,  the  time  will 
come  when  we  shall  understand  each  other.  You  talk  to  me 
as  to  an  unbeliever  who  wants  to  understand,  who  wants 
proofs,  who  has  not  experienced.  The  opposite  of  that  is  in 
my  heart.  .  .  .  And  that  you  should  always  be  coming  at  me 
with  testimonies!  To  what  end?  Do  I  need  testimony  that  I 
live,  that  I  feel?  Only  I  do  value,  yes,  love  and  worship  the 
testimonies  which  show  me  that  thousands  or  only  one  before 
me  have  felt  the  very  thing  that  strengthens  and  fortifies  me. 
And  so  the  word  of  men  is  for  me  the  word  of  God,  no  mat- 
ter whether  priests  or  harlots  have  gathered  it  and  stamped  it 
as  canonical,  or  have  scattered  it  abroad  in  the  form  of  frag- 


222  GOETHE 

ments.  And  with  all  my  soul  I  fall  on  my  brother's  neck — 
Moses!  prophet!  evangelist,  apostle,  Spinoza,  or  Machiavelli! 
But  I  may  also  say  to  each  one  of  them:  Dear  friend,  your 
case  is  like  my  own.  In  particulars  you  feel  powerfully  and 
gloriously,  but  the  Whole  wouldn't  go  into  your  head  any  more 
than  it  goes  into  mine. 

At  the  beginning  of  *  Werther '  this  mystic  religion  of 
love  appears  as  nature-worship.  Werther's  expansive 
emotion  as  he  revels  in  the  May  landscape  is  felt  as  the 
love  of  God.  He  v^rites  thus  of  lying  in  the  deep  grass 
by  a  running  brook: 

When  I  feel  closer  to  my  heart  all  the  little  creatures,  the 
tiny  worms  and  bugs  among  the  grass-blades,  and  feel  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Almighty  who  created  us  in  his  image,  of  the  All- 
loving  who  bears  us  aloft  and  sustains  us  in  eternal  bliss;  my 
friend,  when  at  such  times  a  mist  comes  over  my  eyes  and  the 
earth  and  sky  about  me  rest  entire  in  my  soul,  like  the  form 
of  a  beloved  maiden,  then  a  longing  often  comes  over  me  and 
I  think:  Oh,  couldst  thou  express  that,  couldst  thou  breathe 
upon  the  paper  that  which  lives  in  thee  so  full,  so  warm,  so 
that  it  should  become  the  mirror  of  thy  soul,  as  thy  soul  is  the 
mirror  of  the  living  God! 

But  such  a  religion,  having  no  intellectual  basis  what- 
ever, is  foredoomed  to  be  the  plaything  of  moods.  It 
can  not  bear  up  against  the  whips  and  scorns  of  time. 
After  a  lapse  of  three  months  the  same  scene  that  had 
called  forth  these  raptures  presents  itself  to  Werther 
as  a  vast  process  of  continual  destruction.    To  quote : 

The  most  casual  walk  costs  myriads  of  little  worms  their 
life,  a  step  of  the  foot  destroys  the  toil-wrought  houses  of  the 
ants  and  crushes  a  little  world  into  an  ignominious  grave.  Oh, 
it  is  not  the  great  and  rare  distress  of  the  world  that  moves 
me,  not  the  floods  that  wash  away  your  villages,  the  earth- 
quakes that  swallow  up  your  cities;  what  undermines  my  heart 
is  the  destructive  power  that  is  hidden  in  all  nature,  which  has 


THE  BELIEVER  223 

formed  nothing  that  does  not  destroy  its  neighbor  or  itself. 
And  so  I  reel  along  beset  with  fear.  Heaven  and  earth  and 
all  the  destructive  forces  about  me !  I  see  naught  but  an  ever- 
devouring,  ever-ruminating  monster. 

Like  Werther,  Faust  has  a  purely  emotional  religion 
which  exercises  no  inhibitory  influence  on  his  conduct. 
He  never  thinks  of  it  in  that  connection.  For  him  all 
strong  feeling  partakes  of  the  nature  of  religion,  and 
not  to  feel  strongly  spells  misery.  What  impels  him  to 
magic  is  his  dream  of  ecstatic  communion  with  a  spirit — 
a  rapturous  state  in  which  knowledge  and  joy  shall  blend 
as  one.  When  the  middle-aged  skeptic  sets  the  poison 
to  his  lips  he  is  stayed  by  a  rush  of  Easter  memories — 
of  a  time  when  prayer  was  a  fervid  joy  and  a  strange 
sweet  longing  would  lure  him  out  into  the  fields,  there 
to  shed  floods  of  hot  tears  as  he  felt  a  new  world  coming 
into  being  within  him.  When  he  returns  from  his 
soothing  walk  on  Easter  Sunday  he  is  at  first  filled  with 
a  divine  peace.  But  soon  the  stream  runs  low  and  in 
that  thirsty  inferior  state  he  turns  to  revelation  and 
begins  to  translate  from  John's  gospel.  The  implication 
is  clear  that  if  the  stream  of  feeling  had  remained  at 
high  tide  he  would  have  needed  no  bible.  He  describes 
his  love  for  Margaret  as  a  rapture  which  must  be 
eternal,  whose  ending  would  be  despair — words  which 
mean  that  the  sexual  attraction  is  felt  as  a  part  of  the 
Eternal  Love. 

But  the  classic  passage  for  the  religion  of  Goethe's 
youth  is  Faust's  impassioned  sermon  to  Margaret: 

Who  dare  express  Him? 
And  who  profess  Him, 
Saying :  I  believe  in  Him ! 
Who,  feeling,  seeing, 


224  GOETHE 

Deny  His  being, 

Saying:  I  believe  Him  not! 

The  All-enfolding, 

The  All-upholding, 

Folds  and  upholds  he  not 

Thee,  me.  Himself? 

Arches  not  there  the  sky  above  us? 

Lies  not  beneath  us,  firm,  the  earth? 

And  rise  not,  on  us  shining. 

Friendly,  the  everlasting  stars? 

Look  I  not,  eye  to  eye,  on  thee. 

And  feelst  not,  thronging, 

To  head  and  heart,  the  force 

Still  weaving  its  eternal  secret, 

Invisible,  visible,  round  thy  life? 

Vast  as  it  is,  fill  with  that  force  thy  heart. 

And  when  thou  in  the  feeling  wholly  blessed  art, 

Call  it,  then,  what  thou  wilt, — 

Call  it  Bliss  !  Heart !  Love !  God ! 

I  have  no  name  to  give  it ! 

Feeling  is  all  in  all: 

The  Name  is  sound  and  smoke, 

Obscuring  Heaven's  clear  glow. 


Ill 

In  the  course  of  time,  under  the  impact  of  new  ex- 
perience, this  religious  attitude  underwent  a  notable 
change  which  it  is  impossible  to  trace  step  by  step  and 
difficult  to  describe  in  exact  language.  Nothing  epochal 
happened  unless  it  were  the  reading  of  Spinoza;  and 
that  can  hardly  have  been  epochal,  since  at  the  most  it 
was  only  a  re-reading  under  new  light  and  with  better 
understanding.  Be  that  as  it  may  (see  above,  page  178), 
the  change  that  took  place  can  hardly  be  better  described 
than  as  a  change  from  an  emotional  love  of  God  to  that 
which  Spinoza  calls  the  intellectual  love  of  God,  which 
is  only  another  name  for  acquiescence  in  the  nature  of 


THE  BELIEVER  225 

things.  Perhaps  the  change  would  have  come  about  in 
very  much  the  same  way  without  Spinoza,  for  after  all  it 
was  in  part  only  the  normal  human  development  from 
adolescence  to  middle  life;  from  the  years  when  the 
lower  psychic  centers  are  dominant  and  sexual  love  is 
quite  apt  to  be  felt  as  a  divine  mystery,  to  the  more  calm 
and  steady  regnance  of  the  higher  centers.  What  hap- 
pened in  Goethe's  case  is  what  has  happened  in  myriads 
of  others,  with  the  difference  that  there  was  a  more 
violent  oscillation  over  a  longer  arc. 

In  a  sense  feeling  still  continued  to  be  the  alpha  and 
omega  of  religion,  but  particular  feelings  keyed  up  to 
ecstasy  by  some  incident  of  time  or  chance  no  longer 
seemed  to  be  the  only  avenue  of  approach  to  the  Divine. 
There  was  also  an  intellectual  approach — the  way  of  ob- 
servation and  reasoning — and  on  this  path  the  ecstasies 
of  feeling  had  no  proper  place.  They  might  even  be  dan- 
gerous as  tending  to  restrict  or  becloud  a  man's  vision  of 
the  truth.  Instead  of  being  indulged  to  the  utmost  as 
life's  supreme  blessing  they  needed  rather  to  be  held  in 
check  as  only  one  of  its  blessings. 

But  the  fundamental  mysticism  remained.  Never  for 
a  moment,  either  early  or  late,  did  Goethe  once  imagine 
that  human  wit,  whether  of  priest  or  mystic  or  sage, 
could  ever  penetrate  to  the  very  mind  of  God  as  disclosed 
in  the  totality  of  things.  Each  might  advance  a  little 
way  from  some  new-won  eminence  of  his  own  and  catch 
a  fresh  glimpse  of  the  celestial  city  in  the  clouds,  but  no 
one  would  ever  actually  reach  and  survey  it.  The  All 
was  inscrutable,  incommensurable  with  the  human  mind. 
But  it  was  there  for  reverence,  and  reverence  remained 
for  Goethe  to  the  end  of  his  days  the  very  heart  of  all 


226  GOETHE 

good  religion.  In  the  '  Wanderings  '  of  Wilhelm  Meister 
he  has  a  famous  passage  on  the  three  reverences — for 
that  which  is  above  us,  for  that  which  is  about  us,  and 
for  that  which  is  below  us.  One  of  his  prose  sayings  is 
to  the  effect  that  it  is  very  easy  to  be  witty  if  one  has  no 
respect  for  anything. 

Naturally  the  official  spokesmen  of  organized  religion 
soon  came  to  look  on  him  as  a  lost  man — as  no  Christian. 
And  indeed  he  had  ceased  to  be  a  Christian  in  any 
accepted  sense  of  the  word.  He  no  longer  made  any  pro- 
fession of  a  faith  specifically  Christian,  and  for  about 
twenty-five  years  of  his  life — say  roughly  from  1785  to 
1810 — he  often  let  fly  a  shaft  of  ill-humor  at  the  priests. 
What  he  saw  of  the  Catholic  clergy  in  Italy  displeased 
him  for  the  most  part,  and  still  less  could  he  stomach  the 
zealotry  of  Protestants  and  pietists.  He  did  not  mind 
the  hard  words  they  gave  him  in  return  and  in  time  cheer- 
fully accepted  the  name  of  heathen.  But  from  his  point 
of  view  the  priests  and  his  pique  at  them  had  nothing 
to  do  with  real  religion,  which  he  felt  to  be  an  affair  of 
the  individual  soul  reacting  to  the  total  push  of  the 
cosmos.  In  this  holy  of  holies  sacerdotalism  had  no 
place.  His  God  was  the  immanent  divinity  of  the  world, 
not  the  anthropomorphic  deity  of  ceremonial  worship. 
At  the  same  time  he  probably  felt  in  his  inmost  being 
that  he  was  a  better  Christian,  had  a  truer  insight  into 
the  original  genius  of  Christ's  religion,  than  had  those 
who  denounced  him  as  a  heathen  and  a  pantheist.  The 
words  Gott  and  gottlich  never  ceased  to  be  familiar  and 
awesome  words  of  his  vocabulary.  Of  religion  in  what 
he  conceived  to  be  its  quintessence  he  never  spoke  other- 
wise than  tenderly. 


THE  BELIEVER  227 

Herder  finished  the  fourth  part  of  his  '  Ideas '  in  1788, 
but  withheld  it  from  pubHcation  for  three  years,  fearing, 
it  would  seem,  that  the  book  might  make  trouble  in  influ- 
ential quarters.  But  he  sent  the  manuscript  to  Goethe  to 
read.  The  seventeenth  book  is  a  drastic  arraignment  of 
the  medieval  church,  which  is  presented  as  a  sad  per- 
version of  the  original  Christian  religion.  On  reading  it 
Goethe  wrote  to  Herder,  at  that  time  his  most  intimate 
friend,  as  follows: 

You  have  treated  Christianity  worthily;  for  my  part  I  thank 
you.  I  have  now  had  an  opportunity  to  get  a  closer  view  of 
it  in  the  domain  of  art,  and  there  it  is  right  pitiful.  Many  an 
old  gravamen  has  been  stirred  up  within  me.  It  remains  true : 
The  fairy-tale  of  Christ  is  responsible  for  the  fact  that  the 
world  may  stand  for  ten  thousand  years  longer  and  no  one 
come  to  his  senses,  because  it  requires  just  as  much  strength, 
knowledge,  understanding,  and  insight  to  defend  it  as  to  op- 
pose it.  The  generations  pass  and  the  individual  is  badly  off, 
no  matter  which  side  he  takes;  the  whole  is  never  a  whole. 
And  so  the  human  race  oscillates  to  and  fro  in  rags  and  tat- 
ters— all  of  which  would  not  signify  much  did  it  not  have  great 
influence  on  things  which  are  so  essential  to  man.  Never 
mind.  Look  well  about  you  in  the  Roman  church  and  take  your 
delight  in  that  which  is  delightful. 

IV 

In  his  later  years,  as  we  have  seen  (above,  page  154), 
Goethe  thought  less  unkindly  of  Catholicism.  Its  forms 
and  symbols  and  saint-lore  appealed  to  the  mystic  within 
him  as  a  way  of  approach  to  the  Inscrutable.  But  he 
never  came  to  terms  with  theology  as  an  attempt  to 
fathom  the  unfathomable  for  the  intellect.  It  were 
therefore  quite  futile  to  attempt  to  define  the  final  phase 
of  his  religion  in  any  exact  terms,  or  to  dwell  on  the 
difficulties  that  arise  when  an  out-and-out  pantheist  who 


228  GOETHE 

is  at  the  same  time  an  agnostic  undertakes  to  distinguish 
between  God  and  not-God;  between  feeHngs  that  are 
divine  or  holy  and  feeHngs  that  are  not  divine  or  holy. 
As  a  thinker  he  felt  the  difificulties  and  simply  made  no 
serious  attempt  to  meet  them.  For  him  religion  was  a 
vital  necessity,  yet  not  an  affair  of  the  mind;  it  was 
something  that  begins  when  the  mind  recoils  baffled  from 
the  periphery  of  the  knowable.  But  he  was  much  given 
to  thinking  about  religion  and  explaining  his  way  of 
looking  at  it.  Toward  the  last  it  was  a  favorite  subject 
of  his  talks  with  Eckermann.  Inasmuch  as  the  main  pur- 
pose of  this  study  is  not  to  labor  the  ultimate  questions 
involved,  but  rather  to  portray  the  religion  of  Goethe  and 
show  how  the  mind  of  a  great  man  reacted  to  the  riddle 
of  the  ages,  I  can  hardly  do  better  than  to  bring  together 
some  of  his  more  notable  utterances  and  set  them  down 
with  such  slight  comment  as  may  seem  to  be  in  order. 
It  was  a  theory  of  his,  the  universal  validity  of  which 
is  questionable,  that  the  child  is  naturally  a  realist,  the 
youth  an  idealist,  the  man  a  skeptic,  the  old  man  a  mystic. 
Goethe  held  that  the  world-process  is  rational,  yet  un- 
intelligible. Its  rationality  is  so  far  akin  to  that  of  man 
that  we  may  get  partial  glimpses  of  it  in  certain  states 
of  consciousness;  but  in  the  main  it  is  an  impenetrable 
mystery.  Sometimes  the  Power  that  made  and  makes 
the  world  presents  itself  to  him  as  purposive  will  that  is 
mysteriously  guiding  the  individual  in  the  right  path.  He 
wrote  in  a  letter  of  the  year  1782 : 

So  much  I  can  assure  you :  that  in  the  midst  of  happiness  I 
live  in  a  continual  resignation;  and  amid  all  my  toil  and  moil 
I  see  that  not  my  will  is  being  done,  but  that  of  a  higher 
power  whose  thoughts  are  not  my  thoughts. 


THE  BELIEVER  229 

Had  his  pantheism  really  been  of  the  very  purest  water, 
unaffected  by  his  early  communings  with  a  personal 
Savior,  he  would  hardly  have  found  room  in  the  world 
for  special  providence.  Yet  he  believed  in  special  provi- 
dences— at  least  for  men  of  aspiration  and  good  will. 
It  is  Faust's  *  consciousness  of  the  right  way '  that  is 
going  to  baffle  the  Devil.  Again,  we  read  in  '  Wilhelm 
Meister ' : 

That  I  always  go  forward  and  never  backward;  that  my 
actions  become  evermore  like  my  idea  of  perfection;  that  I 
daily  find  it  easier  to  do  what  I  consider  right,  even  with  my 
weak  body  which  has  so  often  refused  me  service — can  all  that 
be  explained  from  human  nature  whose  corruptness  I  have  seen 
into  so  deeply?  Not  for  me.  I  scarcely  remember  a  com- 
mandment, nothing  appears  to  me  in  the  form  of  a  law.  There 
is  an  inner  urging  that  leads  me  and  guides  me  ever  aright.  I 
freely  follow  my  thoughts,  knowing  as  little  of  restriction  as 
of  remorse.  Thank  God  that  I  recognize  to  whom  I  owe  this 
happiness  and  that  I  can  think  only  with  humility  of  these  ad- 
vantages. For  never  shall  I  run  the  risk  of  becoming  proud 
of  my  powers  and  abilities,  seeing  that  I  have  so  clearly  per- 
ceived what  a  monster  may  be  begotten  and  nourished  in  every 
human  heart  unless  a  higher  power  protects  us. 

Elsewhere  Meister  observes  that  '  real  religion  remains 
an  inner,  even  an  individual  phenomenon;  for  it  has  to 
do  solely  with  the  conscience,  which  is  to  be  aroused  and 
satisfied.'  This  is  good  Kantian  doctrine,  but  the  thought 
is  hardly  a  favorite  one  with  Goethe.  He  was  not  given 
to  talking  much  about  conscience  and  the  moral  law. 
His  heroes  make  no  pretense  of  living  by  it.  They  live 
by  their  instinct,  just  as  Meister  says  he  does. 

Johannes  Falk  represents  Goethe  as  saying  to  him  in 
the  year  181 3: 

I  can  know  nothing  more  of  God  than  that  which  my  limited 
range  of  sense  perception  on  this  earth  warrants,  and  that  is 


230  GOETHE 

little  enough.  But  no  limits  are  set  to  belief.  On  the  con- 
trary, considering  the  immediateness  of  divine  feelings  within 
us,  it  may  happen  that  our  knowledge  appears  as  piecework, 
that  every  observation  remains  imperfect  and  must  be  sup- 
plemented by  belief.  We  must  proceed  from  the  principle  that 
knowledge  and  belief  are  not  there  to  neutralize  but  to  sup- 
plement each  other.    Then  we  shall  always  go  right. 

In  this  connection  I  quote  three  passages  from  Ecker- 

mann: 

What  then  do  we  know  of  the  idea  of  the  Divine  and  what 
meaning  have  our  petty  conceptions  of  the  Supreme  Being? 
Were  I  to  use  a  hundred  names  I  should  still  fall  short,  and 
in  comparison  with  such  limitless  attributes  I  should  have  said 
simply  nothing. 

I  do  not  ask  whether  this  Highest  Being  has  understanding 
and  reason,  but  I  feel  that  it  is  understanding,  is  reason,  itself. 
All  creatures  are  permeated  with  it,  and  man  has  so  much  of 
it  that  he  can  cognize  parts  of  the  Highest. 

The  reason  of  man  and  the  reason  of  the  Deity  are  two  very 
different  things.  As  soon  as  we  concede  freedom  to  man  it  is 
all  up  with  God's  omniscience;  for  as  soon  as  God  knows  what 
I  am  going  to  do  I  am  compelled  to  act  as  he  knows.  I  adduce 
this  only  as  showing  how  little  we  know,  and  that  it  is  not 
good  to  disturb  divine  mysteries. 

Divine  mysteries — in  the  plural  number!  The  Pope 
himself  could  hardly  say  more.  Such  an  utterance 
shows  how  far  Goethe  was  after  all  from  that  fearless 
scientific  spirit  which  holds  that  if  there  is  anything 
divine  in  human  nature  it  is  precisely  the  love  of  truth 
for  its  own  sake.  .  He  had  spent  many  years  in  scientific 
research,  but  had  generally  been  seeking  confirmation 
for  a  preconceived  idea.  Of  the  temper  that  attacks  a 
question  without  any  prepossession  whatever,  not  caring 
whither  the  inquiry  may  lead,  caring  only  to  know  how 
the  thing  really  was  or  is,  but  intent  on  knowing  that,  no 
matter  whose  beliefs  may  be  upset  or  what  traditional 


THE  BELIEVER  231 

heavens  may  fall — of  that  temper  he  had  not  a  particle. 
And  so,  always  weak  in  metaphysics,  yet  possessed  of 
an  unconquerable  desire  to  peer  behind  the  veil,  he  oscil- 
lated in  his  old  age  between  contradictory  ideas.  At  one 
moment  he  could  insist  vehemently  on  the  absolute  un- 
knowableness  of  God  and  denounce  the  priests  for  claim- 
ing to  know  so  much  about  Him.  At  another  time  he 
could  swallow  the  whole  sacerdotal  bolus  and  vent  his 
wrath  on  the  historical  critics  for  disturbing  his  own 
particular  ideas,  admittedly  inadequate,  of  the  Supreme 
Being.     Thus  he  said  to  Eckermann  in  1823: 

Men  treat  God  as  if  the  incomprehensible,  absolutely  inex- 
cogitable  Supreme  Being  were  little  more  than  one  of  their 
own  kind.  Else  they  would  not  say  the  Lord  God,  the  dear 
God,  the  good  God.  For  them,  especially  the  clergy  who  talk 
about  Him  daily,  He  becomes  a  phrase,  a  mere  name,  in  con- 
nection with  which  they  think  nothing  whatever.  But  if  they 
were  permeated  with  a  sense  of  His  greatness  they  would  be 
mute  and  for  reverence  not  care  to  name  Him. 

On  another  occasion,  a  few  years  later,  he  said: 

Genuine  or  spurious  are  curious  questions  to  raise  concerning 
the  bible.  What  is  genuine  but  the  altogether  excellent,  that 
which  is  in  harmony  with  our  purest  nature  and  reason,  and 
serves  us  today  for  our  highest  development?  And  what  is 
spurious  but  the  absurd,  hollow,  stupid,  that  which  bears  no 
fruit,  at  least  none  that  is  good.  I  regard  all  the  four  gospels 
as  absolutely  genuine,  for  in  them  is  at  work  the  glory  of  a 
majesty  that  proceeded  from  the  person  of  Christ  and  is  as 
divine  as  anything  that  has  ever  appeared  on  earth.  If  you 
ask  me  whether  it  lies  in  my  nature  to  offer  him  reverent  wor- 
ship, I  answer.  Most  assuredly.  I  bow  before  him  as  the  divine 
revelation  of  the  highest  principle  of  morality. 

Here  is  the  idea  of  a  perfectly  valid  revelation  of 
which  we  should  know  nothing  whatever  except  for  cer- 
tain ancient  books.     But  in  reading  those  books  we  are 


232  GOETHE 

not  to  apply  our  judgment  or  critical  acumen.  No  matter 
who  wrote  them,  or  when,  or  why,  or  how  they  got 
into  the  canon.  We  are  to  trust  entirely  to  our  sub- 
jective feeling  for  the  Divine.  One  can  not  help  asking. 
What  if  one  man's  feeling  should  differ  from  another's? 


Sometimes  Goethe  went  so  far  as  to  deny  that  there  is 
any  revelation  of  the  Divine  in  history.  Thus  he  makes 
Wilhelm  Meister  say : 

I  can  not  comprehend  at  all  how  people  have  been  able  to 
believe  that  God  speaks  to  us  in  books  and  stories.  He  to 
whom  the  world  does  not  immediately  disclose  its  relation 
to  himself,  whom  his  own  heart  does  not  tell  what  he  owes  to 
others,  will  hardly  learn  it  from  books,  which  properly  speak- 
ing are  there  only  to  give  names  to  our  errors. 

This  idea,  so  diametrically  opposed  to  Goethe's  earlier 
views,  to  the  whole  teaching  of  Herder,  and  to  the  gen- 
eral consensus  of  religious  mankind,  is  perhaps  to  be 
taken  in  connection  with  his  distinction  between  the  un- 
derstanding and  the  reason.  According  to  this  distinc- 
tion the  understanding  is  concerned  with  the  dead  past, 
the  reason  with  the  living  present.  He  said — this  again 
is  from  Eckermann — : 

The  understanding  does  not  reach  up  to  Nature.  Man  must 
be  capable  of  rising  to  the  highest  reason  in  order  to  touch  the 
Divinity  that  is  revealed  in  primary  phenomena,  physical  as 
well  as  moral,  behind  which  it  abides  and  which  proceed  from 
it.  But  the  Divinity  is  active  only  in  what  is  alive,  not  in  what 
is  dead;  in  that  which  is  developing  and  changing,  not  in  that 
which  is  completed  and  stagnant.  Therefore  reason,  in  its  tend- 
ency toward  the  Divine,  has  to  do  only  with  that  which  is  com- 
ing to  be,  that  which  is  alive;  the  understanding  with  that 
which  has  come  to  be  and  is  stationary. 


THE  BELIEVER  233 

How  he  imagined  the  future  of  religion  also  appears 
from  some  of  his  latest  talks  with  Eckermann: 

Even  if  mental  culture  progresses  for  ever,  science  becoming 
wider  and  deeper  and  the  human  spirit  expanding  as  it  may, 
there  will  be  no  outgrowing  of  the  majesty  and  moral  culture 
of  Christianity  as  it  shimmers  and  gleams  in  the  gospels. 

^Also  the  miserable  sectarianism  of  the  Protestants  will  come 
to  an  end,  and  therewith  hate  and  enmity  between  father  and 
son,  between  brother  and  sister.  For  when  people  comprehend 
and  absorb  the  pure  doctrine  of  Christ's  love  as  it  is,  man  will 
feel  great  and  free  and  will  lay  no  particular  stress  on  trifling 
differences  of  ritual. 

With  respect  to  his  belief  in  immortality  Goethe  often 
expressed  himself  in  his  old  age.  It  is  certain  that  he 
clung  to  the  belief  tenaciously  and  regarded  it  as  indis- 
pensable; but  whether  he  believed  in  a  real  survival  of 
personality  after  death,  or  only  in  the  reabsorption  of 
the  particular  drop  into  the  divine  ocean  of  life  from 
which  it  sprang,  is  not  so  easy  to  decide.  His  utter- 
ances can  be  taken  either  way.  Certain  it  is,  however, 
that  he  was  not  content  to  rest  his  belief  solely  on  a 
faith  that  transcends  reason.  He  thought  he  could 
justify  it  by  proofs;  but,  as  is  nearly  always  the  case 
when  men  attempt  to  argue  this  question,  his  proofs 
have  little  weight  for  a  mind  in  need  of  argument.  He 
once  said  to  Chancellor  Miiller: 

In  all  his  earthly  life  man  feels  deeply  and  clearly  in  him- 
self that  he  is  a  citizen  of  that  spiritual  kingdom  the  belief  in 
which  we  can  neither  reject  nor  give  up.  In  this  belief,  which 
we  can  not  get  rid  of,  lies  the  mystery  of  an  eternal  pushing 
on  toward  an  unknown  goal. 

And  again  to  Countess  Egloffstein : 

The  power  to  ennoble  all  things  sensuous  and  to  animate 
the  deadest  material  by  wedding  it  to  a  spiritual  idea  is  the 


234  GOETHE 

surest  guaranty  of  our  supermundane  origin.  However  we  may 
be  attracted  and  held  fast  by  a  thousand  and  one  phenomena 
of  this  earth,  we  are  forced  by  an  inward  longing  ever  and 
again  to  lift  up  our  eyes  to  heaven,  because  a  deep  inexplicable 
feeling  gives  us  the  conviction  that  we  are  citizens  of  those 
worlds  that  shine  above  us  so  mysteriously  and  to  which  we 
shall  one  day  return. 

This  conception  of  man  as  a  citizen  of  two  worlds, 
that  is,  as  partaking  by  his  thought  in  a  kind  of  mind- 
stuff  which  is  indestructible  and  can  not  be  imagined 
away,  underlies  many  a  saying,  for  example : 

It  is  absolutely  impossible  for  a  thinking  man  to  imagine  non- 
existence, a  cessation  of  thinking  and  living.  To  that  extent 
everyone  carries  in  himself  the  proof  of  immortality. 

The  thought  of  death  leaves  me  perfectly  calm,  for  I  have 
the  firm  conviction  that  our  mind  is  an  absolutely  indestructible 
form  of  being,  something  that  works  on  from  eternity  to 
eternity.  It  is  like  the  sun,  which  merely  seems  to  our  earthly 
eyes  to  set,  while  it  really  never  sets  but  shines  continually. 

I  should  not  at  all  like  to  do  without  the  happiness  of  believ- 
ing in  an  eternal  existence;  yes,  I  could  say  with  Lorenzo  dei 
Medici  that  all  those  who  hope  for  no  other  life  are  dead  for 
this  life.  .  .  .  He  who  believes  in  a  continued  life  should  be 
happy  in  a  quiet  way,  but  he  has  no  reason  to  plume  himself  on 
the  belief. 

Sometimes,  in  his  efforts  to  conceive  the  inconceivable, 
he  thought  of  the  endless  life  as  an  impersonal,  undiffer- 
entiated mode  of  existence,  again  as  a  hierarchy  of  souls 
graded  somehow  according  to  merit  previously  acquired. 
Thus  he  makes  one  of  the  characters  in  the  *  Elective 
Affinities  '  say  that  the  '  pure  feeling  of  a  final,  universal 
equality,  at  least  after  death,  seems  to  me  more  soothing 
than  this  obstinate,  stolid  projection  of  our  personal- 
ities, attachments,  and  relations.'  On  the  other  hand, 
Eckermann  records  him  as  saying  in  1829:  'I  do  not 


THE  BELIEVER  235 

doubt  of  our  continued  existence,  for  nature  can  not  do 
without  the  entelechy.  But  we  are  not  all  immortal  in 
the  same  way;  and  in  order  to  manifest  oneself  as  a 
great  entelechy  hereafter  it  is  necessary  to  be  one  here.' 
But  enough  of  these  citations.  I  have  only  wished  to 
make  clear  from  the  authentic  testimony  of  his  own 
words — so  far  as  we  can  trust  the  records — how  the 
aging  Goethe  spoke  inconsistently,  according  to  the  mood 
of  the  hour,  on  questions  of  religion,  and  how  he  was 
wont  to  argue  the  case  for  his  own  belief  in  immortality. 
It  is  clear  that  he  believed  the  human  mind  to  be  a  part 
of  the  indestructible  energy  that  pervades  and  actuates 
the  All.  He  accordingly  believed  that  the  spiritual  ele- 
ments of  personality,  or  at  least  some  of  them,  were  by 
their  very  nature  imperishable.  But  whether  he  believed 
that  the  form  of  personality,  that  is,  the  particular  group- 
ing of  the  imperishable  elements  in  connection  with  a 
perishable  body — whether  he  believed  that  this  too  would 
survive  and  resist  dispersion  after  the  cataclysm  of 
physical  death,  remains  uncertain. 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  POET 

IN  this  study  of  Goethe  the  poet  I  shall  have  regard 
mainly  to  his  lyric  verse  and  his  shorter  poems  of  reflec- 
tion, ignoring  such  poetry  as  may  be  contained  in  met- 
rical plays  or  in  long  narratives  like  '  Hermann  and 
Dorothea.'  Such  a  limitation  is  unphilosophic  in  a  sense, 
for  his  poetic  nature  was  indivisible.  One  might  even 
say  that  it  was  his  poetic  faculty  which  made  him  what 
he  was  by  fusing  the  rest  of  him  into  a  fluid  evolving 
unity.  Think  that  away  and  what  remains  is  not  Goethe 
at  all.  Nevertheless,  he  himself  was  much  given,  at  dif- 
ferent periods  of  his  life,  to  philosophizing  over  his  own 
poetic  process.  If  he  could  think  of  the  poet  in  him  as 
something  apart  from  the  rest  of  his  being  we  may 
surely  do  likewise. 

True  it  is,  again,  that  poetry  in  one  sense  or  another 
tinged  nearly  everything  that  he  wrote,  including  his 
contributions  to  science.  The  charm  of  '  Iphigenie  '  and 
the  fascination  of  '  Faust '  reside  largely  in  their  poetry; 
and  if  we  were  to  take  the  word  in  the  broad  sense  of 
the  German  Dichtung,  which  includes  imaginative  com- 
position of  all  kinds,  something  similar  might  be  said 
of  '  Werther '  and  even  of  '  Wilhelm  Meister.'  But  I 
do  not  now  take  the  word  in  the  broad  sense  of  the 

236 


THE  POET  237 

German  Dichtung,  but  in  the  restricted  sense  familiar  to 
English  and  French  usage.  '  Iphigenie  '  and  '  Faust '  are 
primarily  plays,  just  as  '  Werther '  and  '  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter '  are  primarily  novels.  Whatever  poetry  they  em- 
body may  thus  fairly  be  considered  as  incidental,  to  be 
taken  note  of  when  we  are  occupied  with  the  dramatist 
and  the  novelist. 

And  after  all,  the  limitation  proposed  is  philosophic 
in  a  way,  because  the  modern  poet  is  essentially  a  lyric 
poet,  or  at  least  an  artificer  of  little  things.  His  works 
are  opuscula.  I  have  heard  a  man  of  insight  maintain 
that  a  long  poem  is  impossible.  Of  yore,  no  doubt,  the 
poet  might  be  a  story-teller,  a  singer,  a  seer,  a  sage,  a 
purveyor  of  communal  pleasure  in  song  and  dance,  an 
inciter  to  action.  Perhaps  his  story-telling  function  was 
the  most  important,  and  for  that  he  was  wont  to  allow 
himself  plenty  of  time  as  he  spun  out  his  interminable 
epics.  But  in  our  day  the  story-telling  function  has  been 
inherited  by  the  romancer  and  the  novelist,  who  try  to 
win  us  by  their  plot  (or  lack  of  it)  and  characters,  which 
do  not  now  fall  under  the  head  of  poetry,  albeit  the 
Greek  conception  included  them.  Again,  the  function  of 
the  dramatic  poet,  as  practiced  say  by  Sophocles,  has 
been  distributed  under  our  modern  division  of  labor 
among  the  playwright,  the  composer,  the  ballet-master, 
and  the  ethical  teacher;  while  the  ancient  interpreter  of 
divine  ways  is  now  represented  by  philosophers,  preach- 
ers, and  moralists  who  mostly  deliver  themselves  in 
prose.  Thus  there  remains  for  the  poet  of  our  day  only 
the  lyric  sphere  and  that  of  marginal  commentator  on 
the  book  of  life.  This  is  what  I  mean  to  include  in  the 
present  chapter. 


238  GOETHE 


The  world  has  agreed — such  feeble  dissent  as  there  is 
may  be  ignored — to  regard  Goethe  as  the  greatest  of 
German  poets.  It  may  well  be,  however,  that  the  repu- 
tation of  the  poet  has  acquired  some  adventitious  luster 
from  the  general  prestige  of  the  man,  who  was  so  much 
besides.  Writers  often  praise  or  dispraise  the  poet  when 
they  evidently  mean  the  philosopher,  the  critic  of  life. 
It  may  be  observed  in  passing  that  Matthew  Arnold's 
formula  for  Goethe's  distinction,  '  the  clearest,  largest, 
and  most  helpful  thinker  of  modern  times,'  takes  no  ac- 
count of  his  poetry;  for  surely  clear  thinking  is  not  pri- 
marily a  poet's  affair.  What  then  is  his  affair  if  we  begin 
by  subtracting  the  invention  of  a  more  or  less  elaborate 
fiction  or  plot  such  as  can  be  told  in  prose?  Let  us  say 
tentatively,  not  forgetting  that  the  quintessence  of  poetry 
will  always  evade  precise  definition  in  prose,  that  the 
poet's  affair  is  to  feel  intensely  and  to  express  his  feeling 
in  rhythmic  language  that  appeals  strongly  to  the  sense 
of  artistic  fitness.  To  feel  intensely:  this  is  not  to  say 
passionately.  There  is  much  excellent  poetry  that  is  not 
impassioned,  but  none  without  the  emotional  stress, 
fervor,  glow,  that  is  its  birthmark.  In  proportion  as  a 
poet's  feeling  touches  a  wide  range  of  human  experience, 
is  universal  without  being  trivial;  in  proportion,  too,  as 
his  words  bear  the  stamp  of  a  unique  artistic  fitness  that 
does  not  age  with  time  or  stale  with  repetition — we  call 
him  great. 

In  using  the  word  '  feeling '  where  another  might  per- 
haps have  preferred  the  word  '  thought '  I  do  not  exactly 
mean  to  set  a  stigma  on  intellectual  poetry.     Thought 


THE  POET  239 

and  feeling  are  not  enemies,  the  one  to  be  taken  and  the 
other  left;  they  are  rather  twins  who  have  grown  up 
together,  becoming  inseparable  and  indistinguishable. 
*  Brain-spun  '  as  applied  to  poetry  is  thought  to  be  a  term 
of  reproach;  Goethe  himself  once  damned  a  piece  of 
would-be  poetic  creation  as  '  only  thought.'  Still,  it  is 
well  enough  to  remember  that  in  the  life  of  the  race 
what  is  best  is  all  brain-spun.  If  poetry  were  only  a 
matter  of  feeling  it  is  difficult  to  see  how,  in  practicing 
the  art,  an  heir  of  all  the  ages  would  have  any  obvious 
advantage  over  the  ancient  cave-dweller.  That  which 
repels  in  argumentative  or  opinionative  verse  is  less  often 
its  intellectuality  than  its  coldness;  for  the  intellect  may 
glow,  too.  Mere  logic,  however  acute  and  however  irre- 
proachably measured  off  into  longs  and  shorts,  can  never 
do  the  work  of  poetry  until  the  intellect  becomes  at  least 
incandescent  and  the  imagination  begins  to  flash  its 
lights. 

That  which  it  most  boots  us  to  know  about  a  poet  is 
not  his  opinions,  albeit  these  may  have  their  biographic 
interest,  but  how  he  envisaged  life,  to  what  he  was  es- 
pecially sensitive,  where  his  fancy  liked  to  play.  Since 
the  style  is  the  man  his  mere  art  of  expression  may  also 
properly  concern  us  to  some  extent.  But  knowledge  of 
a  poet's  technic  and  the  close  scrutiny  of  his  style  are 
worth  while  only  so  far  as  they  really  help  us  to  get  and 
retain  the  savor  of  him  and  to  have  a  true  feeling  for  his 
Eigenart.  To  do  that,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  see  him 
under  the  aspect  of  evolution  as  steadily  made  over  by 
the  Genius  of  Life.  His  poetry  reflects  his  character, 
his  moods,  his  changing  philosophy,  his  reaction  to  the 
total  urge  of  existence.    As  for  Goethe,  we  have  to  re- 


240  GOETHE 

member  that  the  youthful  dreamer  who  took  his  seat 
in  the  ducal  council  of  Weimar  in  1776  was  a  very  dif- 
ferent man  from  the  author  of  the  '  Roman  Elegies/ 
and  he  again  altogether  unlike  the  aging  emulator  of 
Hafiz.  It  should  be  against  the  law  to  quote  Goethe's 
verse  as  an  evidence  of  his  way  of  envisaging  life  unless 
one  knows  and  has  duly  considered  which  Goethe  it  is 
that  one  is  quoting. 

II 

Let  us  first  turn  our  attention,  then,  to  the  poetry  of 
Goethe's  youth — that  which  preceded,  say  roughly,  the 
year  1776.  Strange  as  it  may  sound,  there  is  really  not 
very  much  of  it.  In  the  Prelude  to  '  Faust,'  written 
in  middle  life,  the  Poet  is  made  to  speak  mournfully  of 
his  youth  as  a  time  when  the  fountain  of  song  flowed 
incessantly.  The  passage  is  of  course  biographic  and 
implies  that,  as  it  seemed  to  him  in  the  retrospect,  his 
early  years  had  been  largely  dominated  by  the  lyric 
mood.  But  it  was  hardly  so.  One  can  not  say  that  the 
youth  of  Goethe  was  on  the  whole  highly  prolific  in 
song.  According  to  the  best  census  I  can  make,  the  num- 
ber of  short  poems  that  are  surely  Goethe's  and  were 
surely  written  prior  to  1776  is  not  more  than  sixty  or 
seventy.  This  would  mean,  if  the  lyric  flow  had  been 
distributed  evenly  over  the  ten  years  of  his  adolescence, 
an  average  of  six  or  seven  per  annum.  My  list  takes 
account  of  every  string  of  verses  that  has  a  title  or  a 
definite  theme,  regardless  of  their  lyric  quality.  It  in- 
cludes a  number  of  the  merest  bagatelles  that  have  no 
poetic  distinction  whatever. 

Now  this  is  not  an  extraordinary  showing  in  point  of 


THE  POET  241 

mere  poetic  affluence.  One  can  easily  think  of  many 
less  famous  poets  whose  youth  was  much  richer  in  song 
than  Goethe's.  Even  Lessing,  who  in  time  became  con- 
vinced that  he  was  no  poet  at  all,  was  more  prolific  of 
petites  poesies  in  his  youth.  So  was  Schiller,  and  so  were 
several  of  the  Romanticists.  At  best  the  trope  of  the 
copious  spring  is  applicable  in  Goethe's  case  only  now 
and  then  when  the  lyric  impulse  had  been  quickened  by  a 
fresh  love-affair. 

I  am  groping  toward  an  answer  to  the  question :  How 
would  Goethe  rank  as  a  poet  if  we  had  to  judge  him 
solely  by  the  work  of  his  youth  and  quite  without  regard 
either  to  his  later  prestige  as  a  critic  of  life  or  to  his 
early  prestige  as  a  novelist  and  a  playwright?  And 
we  must  admit  that  if  fecundity  was  not  a  particularly 
strong  point  of  his,  neither  was  variety.  Several  of  the 
lyric  themes  that  have  made  much  tinkling  in  the  corri- 
dors of  time  were  quite  alien,  or  all  but  alien,  to  his  early 
muse.  Such,  for  example,  are  religion,  patriotism, 
friendship,  wine,  the  brave  days  of  old,  springtime,  war, 
and  death.  This  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that  he  was 
insensitive  to  these  things,  but  only  that  they  did  not  stir 
him  to  verse-making  in  his  early  years.  Afterwards  some 
of  them  did.  It  is  really  remarkable,  in  view  of  his 
genius  for  friendship,  that  there  are  no  early  poems  in- 
spired by  that  theme.  I  do  not  overlook  the  '  odes  '  to 
Behrisch.  They  are  not  really  poems  of  friendship,  but 
prosodic  efforts  dedicated  to  a  student's  passing  acquaint- 
ance. So  with  regard  to  religion.  At  the  age  of  twenty 
Goethe  passed  a  religious  crisis  which  bit  deep  into  his 
inner  being;  but  it  did  not  move  him  to  poetic  expres- 
sion, except  long  afterwards  in  *  Faust.'     The  juvenile 


242  GOETHE 

poem  of  '  Christ's  Descent  into  Hell '  does  not  count  in 
this  connection.  It  again  is  a  prosodic  effort  which  might 
just  as  well,  so  far  as  personal  feeling  is  concerned,  have 
been  about  Siegfried  and  the  dragon. 

The  most  of  the  early  poems  are  occupied  either  with 
the  stirrings  of  sexual  love  or  with  one  or  another  phase 
of  nature-feeling.  These  are  the  two  chief  sources  of 
lyric  inspiration  and  they  often  flow  together  in  the  same 
poem.  The  erotic  strain  is  predominant;  so  let  us  con- 
sider that  first. 

The  *  New  Songs'  of  1769,  twenty  in  number  and 
presenting  of  course  a  selection  of  what  Goethe  himself 
liked  best  in  his  lyric  production  up  to  that  time,  are 
nearly  all  love-songs.  In  style  and  temper  they  belong 
to  the  age  of  gallantry.  Love  is  thought  of  rather  friv- 
olously— one  may  not  say  ignobly — as  an  interesting 
game  pursued  by  the  male  sex  with  little  concern  about 
a  permanent  mating.  The  sport  has  its  thrills  and  titil- 
lations,  its  anxieties  and  pangs,  its  forbidden  fruit;  alto- 
gether it  is  a  good  subject  to  philosophize  about,  tho 
the  philosophy  that  emerges  is  rather  boyish.  One  gets 
an  impression  of  facile  talent  making  verses  in  the  fash- 
ion of  the  time,  twittering  lightly  of  the  sexual  attrac- 
tion, and  occasionally  risking  a  mild  impropriety — all 
without  any  high  commission  from  Apollo.  What  is 
most  noticeable  in  the  artistry  of  these  songs  is  their 
extreme  simplicity  of  phrasing.  The  words  are  the  com- 
mon coin  of  the  realm — nowhere  anything  striking  or 
scintillant.  Compared  with  the  difficult  soaring  and  the 
verbal  audacities  of  many  another  young  lyrist,  the  early 
verse  of  Goethe  seems  almost  commonplace. 

As  we  should  expect  from  the  great  volatility  of  his 


THE  POET  243 

sexual  feeling — a  new  sweetheart  every  year  or  two — 
poetry  of  a  deeply  passionate  tinge  was  not  his  affair. 
Nowhere  the  fervid  note  of  souls  mated  for  eternity, 
as  in  Klopstock,  or  drawn  together  by  the  pre-established 
harmony  of  the  cosmos,  as  in  Schiller.  This  applies  not 
only  to  the  Leipsic  songs,  but  to  those  that  came  later. 
There  is  really  but  one  poem  in  the  entire  number  which 
says  *  I  love  you '  in  the  present  tense,  and  says  it  in 
words  at  once  perfectly  serious,  deeply  impassioned,  and 
free  from  all  introspective  comment.  This  is  the  May- 
song  beginning 

How  Nature  gleams 

In  a  radiance  rare! 
How  bright  the  sun 

And  the  field  how  fair ! 

Some  of  the  songs  are  retrospective,  in  accord  with 
Wordsworth's  formula  of  '  emotion  remembered  in  tran- 
quillity.' Such  is  the  one  beginning  '  My  heart  beat  fast,' 
published  in  Jacobi's  Iris  for  March,  1775,  but  evidently 
begotten  of  a  much  earlier  visit  to  Friederike  at  Sesen- 
heim.  The  poet  remembers  the  beating  of  his  heart  as 
he  mounted  his  horse,  the  eerie  things  of  the  moonlit 
landscape,  the  mild  joy  beaming  from  the  maiden's  face, 
his  own  sense  of  not  deserving  such  happiness,  the  pain 
of  the  inevitable  parting. 

The  other  Sesenheim  poems — I  refer  to  those  which 
are  certainly  Goethe's — are  trifles  that  speak  the  lan- 
guage of  sentimental  endearment  rather  than  of  fervid 
passion.  The  prettiest  of  them,  '  Little  flowers,  tiny 
leaflets,'  is  supposed  to  adorn  the  dress  of  the  *  young 
rose  '  who  receives  it.  The  last  stanza  expresses  the  hope 
that  the  tie  which  binds  her  to  the  sender  may  be  no 


244  GOETHE 

'  frail  bond  of  roses/  In  view  of  what  happened  this 
may  be  set  down  to  the  account  of  poetic  moonshine.  So 
too  the  verses  beginning  '  This  message  brings  a  Httle 
chain/  sent  with  a  gold  neck-chain.  The  tone  of  these 
poems  is  always  happy.  There  is  no  hint  of  the  mis- 
givings which,  as  we  know  from  other  sources,  were 
troubling  the  mind  of  the  writer — ^no  bitterness  in  the 
exhilarating  cup. 

It  is  otherwise  with  the  few  songs  that  grew  out  of 
Goethe's  short-lived  engagement  in  the  year  1775.  Lili, 
or  Belinda,  as  he  sometimes  calls  the  object  of  his  half- 
reluctant  devotion,  is  at  once  his  bliss  and  his  torment. 
We  never  hear  the  note  of  happy  abandon,  but  rather 
that  of  unrest  and  complaint  that  love  has  disturbed  his 
habits.  It  is  probable  that  Schiller,  listening  with  rapt 
attention  and  hearing  spheral  harmonies  in  the  divine 
Laura's  piano-playing,  would  have  thought  the  upsetting 
of  his  previous  routine  a  negligible  grief.  But  Goethe 
was  less  given  to  blowing  iridescent  literary  bubbles. 
Lili's  parties  and  balls,  her  buzzing  admirers,  the  social 
flutter  in  which  she  lived,  bored  him  and  gave  him  con- 
cern for  the  future.  Why  should  she  call  him  away 
from  the  dreamy  seclusion  of  his  attic  chamber  at  night 
and  compel  him  to  play  cards  with  uninteresting  folk? 
And  yet — the  maid  is  so  very  bewitching. 

Where  thou  art,  angel,  love  and  goodness  are, 
Where  thou  art  is  Nature. 

But  Goethe's  early  love-affairs,  notwithstanding  the 
ado  that  has  been  made  about  them  in  printed  books, 
beginning  with  '  Poetry  and  Truth,'  were  in  no  sense 
epochal  events  in  his  life.     None  of  them  left  a  deep 


THE  POET  245 

mark  in  his  inner  being.  His  was  not  one  of  the  natures 
that  crave  or  are  capable  of  giving  a  stedfast,  all- 
centering  love ;  it  was  rather  eclectic,  needing  love  for  the 
poet,  but  not  imperatively  for  the  man.)  This  is  not  to 
say  that  he  was  ever  insincere.  He  was  merely  volatile, 
easily  attracted  but  not  to  be  held.  He  dreaded  mar- 
riage because  it  would  restrict  his  freedom,  yet  he  knew 
that  the  great  prizes  are  not  to  be  had  without  paying  for 
them.  Hence  his  characteristic  *  restlessness  '  and  the 
mixed  note  of  joy  and  pain  in  his  early  love-poetry. 
Again  and  again  we  hear  the  plaint.  There  is  no  hap- 
piness without  love,  yet  no  happiness  with  it,  since  all  is 
transitory. 

Like  dreams  the  warmest  kisses  pass. 
And  all  delight  is  like  a  kiss. 

In  *  Christel,'  one  of  the  most  charming  of  his  early 
love-songs,  published  in  Wieland's  Merkur  for  April, 
1776,  even  the  giddy  pleasure  of  the  dance  is  infected 
with  this  nameless  pain.  When  her  eyes  look  love  at 
him,  forgetting  all  the  world  as  she  draws  him  close 
and  gives  him  a  kiss. 

It  thrills  me  as  we  glide  along 

Down  to  my  little  toe; 
I  am  so  weak,  I  am  so  strong, 

So  full  of  joy  and  woe. 

No  doubt  it  makes  a  poet  interesting  to  us  moderns  if 
he  hint  now  and  then — not  too  persistently — of  a  trouble 
rooted  not  in  any  personal  affliction  but  in  the  world's 
woe.  This  suggests  profound  experience,  while  unvary- 
ing cheerfulness  may  arouse  the  suspicion  that  he  does 
not  know  enough  to  be  sad.     Goethe  was  the  first  Ger- 


246  GOETHE 

man  poet  to  make  much  of  this  nameless  pain  and  to 
exploit  the  *  solace  of  tears.'  It  would  not  be  true  to  say 
that  the  note  was  ever  habitual  with  him  or  that  it  con- 
tinued long  to  be  heard  in  his  verse.  But  it  harmonized 
with  occasional  moods  of  his  youth  and  begot  a  kind  of 
poesy  that  appealed  to  a  sentimental  age.  What  has 
saved  the  poems  and  endeared  them  to  more  virile  epochs 
is,  just  as  in  the  case  of  '  Werther,'  their  exquisite  artistry 
and  their  engaging  rendition  of  the  simple  common 
values.  Here  lies  the  charm  of  the  '  King  of  Thule,'  the 
*  Heath-rose/  and  of  such  little  gems  as  *  On  the  Lake ' 
and  *  Hunter's  Evening-song.* 

Ill 

Our  next  period  extends  from  1776  to  1789,  when 
the  first  edition  of  the  collected  poems  came  from  the 
press  of  Goschen.  This  edition  enables  us  to  date  at 
least  roughly  a  number  of  poems  that  otherwise  might 
not  be  datable  at  all. 

Considering  how  all  of  Goethe's  major  literary  proj- 
ects came  to  a  standstill  at  Weimar,  how  hard  he  worked 
at  the  public  business,  and  that  toward  the  last  he  often 
suffered  from  a  depression  of  spirits  amounting  almost  to 
hypochondria,  one  is  prone  to  think  of  this  epoch  as  a 
time  of  poetic  dearth.  But  it  was  not  really  so.  The 
short  poems  of  this  decade — none  appeared  between  1786 
and  1789 — are  quite  numerous  and  much  richer  in  import 
than  those  of  the  preceding  ten  years.  This  is  the  period 
that  brought  forth  the  two  exquisite  evening-songs 
'  Thou  who  art  in  Heaven,'  and  *  Over  all  heights,'  the 
splendid  ballads  *  Elf-king '  and  '  Fisherman,'  the  noble 
personal  poems  '  Ilmenau '  and  '  Hans  Sachs's  Mission,' 


THE  POET  247 

the  tender  melancholy  of  *  Again  thou  fillest  copse  and 
vale,'  the  lofty  music  of  *  Let  man  be  noble '  and  the 
'  Soul  of  man  is  like  the  water,'  and  the  string  of  lyric 
jewels  in  *  Wilhelm  Meister,'  notably  '  Knowst  thou  the 
land  '  and  *  Who  never  ate  his  bread  with  tears.' 

These  poems,  taken  by  and  large,  are  no  longer  the 
mere  record  of  passing  moods  or  of  personal  adventure 
in  the  little  world  of  feeling  and  fancy.  Something  like 
a  dominant  philosophy  begins  to  emerge.  To  be  sure,  it 
emerges  very  gradually  and  is  rather  elusive  when  one 
tries  to  describe  it  in  exact  words.  The  old  unrest  lives 
on  for  a  while  and  forms  the  burden  of  several  songs. 
But  there  is  a  difference.  It  is  as  if  the  poet  were  no 
longer  intent  solely  on  his  own  private  woe,  like  an  infant 
crying  in  the  night,  but  were  more  concerned  to  search 
out  the  connection  between  his  inner  trouble  and  the 
Great  Order,  which  now  begins  to  be  felt  as  wise  and 
beautiful.  Pain  is  a  means  of  grace.  Knowledge  of  the 
heavenly  powers  is  only  for  him  who  has  eaten  his  bread 
with  tears.  The  iron  necessity  that  rules  in  Nature  is 
part  of  her  beauty  and  the  source  of  her  power  to  soothe 
and  uplift.  A  man  is  to  be  *  noble,  helpful,  and  good,' 
not  from  mere  instinct  or  impulse,  but  because  that '  alone 
distinguishes  him  from  all  the  beings  that  we  know.' 

This  calm  determination  to  take  life  as  it  comes  and 
acquiesce  in  the  will  of  God  becomes  a  complete  panoply 
against  all  the  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to.  Yet  this  temper 
does  not  lead  to  quietism  or  to  praise  of  quietism,  but 
rather  to  eagerness  for  life,  with  all  its  ever-changing 
discipline  of  joy  and  sorrow,  pleasure  and  pain.  It  be- 
comes a  man  to  '  push  on  against  snow  and  rain,'  to  wish 
that  the  fountain  of  tears  may  never  dry  up,  to  find  a 


248  GOETHE 

blessed  boon  in  melancholy  itself.  This,  in  dull  prose,  is 
the  meaning  to  be  extracted  from  '  Restless  Love,'  *  Bliss 
of  Melancholy,'  '  The  Divine,'  and  other  well-know^n 
poems  that  need  not  be  mentioned  by  name. 

It  is  this  profound  ethicism,  born  of  an  inner  longing 
for  peace,  nourished  by  the  reading  of  Spinoza  and  find- 
ing solace  in  cosmic  emotion,  that  distinguishes  Goethe's 
lyric  production  in  what  I  have  chosen  to  regard  as  the 
second  stage  of  its  evolution.  Here  is  something  new 
in  German  poetry;  something  quite  different  from  the 
ordinary  naive  reaction  to  nature's  more  or  less  grateful 
aspects.  If  I  mistake  not  we  are  here  at  the  source,  so 
far  as  modern  poetry  is  concerned,  of  Wordsworth's 

sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man; 
A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  thro'  all  things. 

Many,  it  would  seem,  are  insensitive  to  this  kind  of  feel- 
ing. To  Goethe,  who  first  set  it  to  music  for  the  modern 
world,  it  brought  a  very  genuine  consolation. 

It  was  but  a  phase  of  this  pantheistic  emotion  that  he 
could  now  find  exhilaration  in  simply  yielding  to  the 
elan  of  physical  existence:  in  sweeping  along  on  skates 
without  a  care,  in  courting  the  storm,  and  in  communing 
alone  with  the  bleak  mountain  solitudes  in  November. 
This  desire  to  explore  every  nook  and  corner  of  possible 
experience  and  push  out  to  the  utmost  periphery  of  it  is 
the  residuum   of  that  wild  passion   for  nature  which 


THE  POET  249 

found  such  over-strained,  at  times  almost  insane,  ex- 
pression in  '  Faust.'  Clearly  there  was  need  of  the  sed- 
ative that  came  at  Weimar  in  the  routine  of  petty  state- 
craft and  the  study  of  rocks  and  plants. 

Did  he  also  need  the  love  of  a  married  woman  whom 
he  could  not  take  to  wife  ?  That  is  a  question  for  the  Del- 
phic oracle — for  the  supermundane  wisdom  which  alone 
sees  the  end  from  the  beginning  and  can  unravel  the  long 
and  intricate  complex  of  a  man's  life.  One  can  easily 
imagine  that  a  suitable  marriage  might  have  quickly  laid 
the  demons  of  unrest  and  have  suffused  his  days  with  a 
quiet  happiness.  But  in  that  case  we  should  have  had  at 
any  rate  a  very  different  Goethe.  '  Iphigenie '  and 
'  Tasso '  would  never  have  come  into  being  as  the  world 
knows  them,  Faust  would  never  have  been  disturbed  by 
that  dismal  song  crooned  in  his  ears  incessantly, 

Thou  shalt  deny  thyself,  thou  shalt  deny, 

and  many  a  string  of  verses  that  tell  of  pain  and  struggle 
in  language  of  enduring  beauty  would  have  remained  un- 
written. We  should  have  heard  less  in  his  later  years 
of  the  great  gospel  of  renunciation.  On  the  whole  it 
seems  better  to  be  content  with  our  poet  as  the  Lord 
made  him.  Domestic  bliss  such  as  any  phiHstine  may 
aspire  to  might  peradventure  have  spoiled  him. 

IV 

From  such  verse  as  we  have  been  considering,  from  the 
mystic  soulfulness  of  Mignon's  longings,  the  noble  apoth- 
eosis of  a  spiritualized  poetry  in  '  Dedication,'  the  hu- 
mane aspiration  of  the  '  Mysteries,' — from  all  this  it 
seems  a  far  cry  indeed  to  the  '  Roman  Elegies.'     We 


250  GOETHE 

know  what  had  come  between.  It  was  Italy  which  had 
disenthralled  the  sensual  man  and  turned  his  poetic  feel- 
ing into  the  channels  long  ago  worn  by  Tibullus  and 
Propertius.  Lord  Byron  in  Italy  presents  himself  to  the 
imagination  as  a  sick  man  finding  a  sad  nepenthe  for  his 
trouble  in  the  contemplation  of  the  greater  tragedy  of 
Rome: 

Oh  Rome,  my  country !     City  of  the  soul ! 
The  orphans  of  the  heart  must  turn  to  thee, 
Lone  mother  of  dead  empires,  and  control 
In  their  shut  breasts  their  petty  misery. 

Nothing  of  that  in  Goethe,  altho  it  would  seem  to  have 
been  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world.  No  hint  any- 
where of  the  old  gnawing  pain  save  as  a  thing  of  the  dis- 
tant past. 

Oh,  how  happy  I  am  in  Rome,  when  I  think  of  the  dismal 
Days  of  the  distant  North,  wrapping  me  round  in  their  folds, 

Think  of  the  somber  sky  that  ever  lowered  above  me. 
Mind  aweary  and  sad,  world  without  color  or  form. 

While  I,  searching  the  ways  of  an  ever  unsatisfied  spirit, 
Gloomily  mused  and  moped,  brooding  over  myself. 

All  that  old  misery  has  now  been  dispelled  by  the  pagan 
gods,  among  whom  Cupido  plays  the  leading  role.  The 
Italian  moon  is  brighter  than  the  northern  day. 

The  frank  eroticism  of  the  *  Roman  Elegies  '  is  mainly 
retrospective  fiction,  begotten  not  of  a  profligate  life  in 
Rome  but  of  later  transports  of  which  Christiane  Vulpius 
was  the  partner.  The  new  tone  was  but  a  passing  phase 
of  Goethe's  poetry,  yet  symptomatic  of  a  profound 
change  in  his  outlook  on  life.  It  ushers  in  what  may  best 
be  called  his  pagan  period,  which  comes  to  an  end  with 


THE  POET  251 

his  mental  excursion  to  the  Orient.  In  prose  its  cHmac- 
teric  is  the  tribute  to  Winckelmann ;  in  verse  perhaps  the 
'  Bride  of  Corinth,'  one  of  the  very  best  of  German 
ballads. 

In  this  middle  stage  of  his  career  we  find  Goethe  com- 
mitted to  a  theory  of  poetry  which,  so  far  as  I  know, 
had  not  been  definitely  formulated  before,  tho  kindred 
conceptions  can  perhaps  be  found  here  and  there  in 
earlier  writers.  It  is  the  theory  that  the  poet's  great 
function  is  to  discover  and  express  the  essential  harmony 
that  underlies  the  jangled  multiplicity  of  life's  phenom- 
ena. In  his  earlier  years  he  had  had  no  theory  and  had 
needed  none.  Feeling  was  all  in  all,  and  what  made  the 
poet — so  it  is  said  in  *  Gotz  von  Berlichingen ' — was  a 
heart  completely  filled  with  one  emotion.  But  now  that 
he  had  conquered  his  own  unrest  and  made  his  way  by 
painful  struggles  to  inward  peace  and  a  serene  enjoy- 
ment of  life,  what  wonder  if  it  seemed  to  him  that  the 
process  was  typical  ?  That  the  essence  of  the  poet's  call- 
ing was  always  to  seek  out 

The  central  peace  subsisting  at  the  heart 
Of  endless  agitation.? 

This  view  of  the  poet's  function  is  set  forth  in  a  well- 
known  passage  of  the  Prelude  to  *  Faust ' : 

When  on  the  spindle,  spun  to  endless  distance. 

By  Nature's  Hstless  hand  the  thread  is  twirled, 

And  the  discordant  tones  of  all  existence 

In  sullen  jangle  are  together  hurled, 

Who  then  the  changeless  orders  of  creation 

Divides  and  kindles  into  rhythmic  dance? 

Who  brings  the  one  to  join  the  general  ordination. 

Where  it  may  throb  in  grandest  consonance? 


252  GOETHE 

The  answer  to  the  conundrum  is  the  poet.  The  lines 
were  probably  written  in  1798  or  soon  thereafter,  but 
the  idea  had  found  lodgment  in  Goethe's  mind  some  time 
before.  We  read  in  *  Tasso,'  where  the  connection  is 
such  as  to  show  that  the  words  are  meant  to  apply,  not 
only  to  the  author  of  '  Jerusalem  Delivered,'  but  to  all 
true  poets  whatsoever : 

His  ear  perceives  the  harmony  of  nature. 
What  history  affords  and  Hfe  presents. 
His  wilHng  breast  absorbs  incessantly; 
He  gathers  in  his  soul  the  widely  sundered 
And  with  his  feeling  animates  the  dead. 

It  will  not  escape  notice  that  the  office  here  assigned 
to  the  poet  is  virtually  the  same  as  that  usually  assigned 
to  the  philosopher.  For  what  are  we  to  make  of  all 
the  tropes  about  hearing  the  harmony  of  nature  and 
absorbing  the  discordant  manifoldness  of  the  world  to 
give  it  back  in  tuneful  rhythms — what  does  it  mean' 
in  plain  prose  but  the  effort  of  the  thinking  mind  to 
find  a  unifying  principle  in  the  chaos  of  the  phenomenal 
world?  But  this,  one  might  almost  say,  is  the  central 
problem  of  philosophy.  Can  the  quest  succeed?  Will 
it  ever  shout  a  final  eureka?  William  James  argued 
that,  so  far  as  solid  facts  go,  the  pluralistic  view  of 
the  universe  has  more  in  its  favor  than  the  monism 
which  was  so  dear  to  Goethe.  Without  attempting 
to  labor  the  question  I  only  remark  that  the  theory 
under  consideration  makes  of  poetry  something  essen- 
tially calm,  pensive,  contemplative;  for  the  spirit  that 
would  hear  a  transcendental  harmony  must  not  be  agi- 
tated by  storms  of  feeling.     There  is  no  room  for  the 


THE  POET  253 

ecstasies  of  passion,  the  intoxication  of  love,  or  the  white 
heat  of  indignation.  The  poet's  eye  must  not  roll  in 
a  frenzy,  glancing  from  heaven  to  earth  and  earth  to 
heaven,  but  gaze  steadily  at  the  fixed  order  of  the  world. 
That  this  conception  of  the  poet's  calling  ever  greatly 
affected  the  practice  of  Goethe  in  the  lyric  domain  I  am 
unable  to  see.  Indeed  there  would  be  ground  for  sur- 
prise if  it  had,  since  song  is  not  born  of  such  sublimated 
philosophic  ideas.  The  most  we  can  say  is  that  it  fits 
in  with,  even  if  it  does  not  account  for,  the  pervading 
optimism  and  genial  pensiveness  of  his  later  verse. 
One  who  had  come  to  feel  that  the  poet's  great  mis- 
sion was  to  discover  harmony  at  the  heart  of  the  world's 
discord,  and  withal  to  cherish  his  own  equanimity  as 
one  of  the  greatest  of  blessings,  was  not  likely  to  sur- 
render himself  to  high  emotional  excitement  or  to  dwell 
much  in  his  imagination  on  the  painful  or  the  tragic. 
By  nature  he  had  little  affinity  for  the  tragic.  He  had 
now  left  his  own  tragic  discord  behind  him  and  could 
look  back  on  it  as  the  happily  landed  mariner  looks  back 
on  the  perils  and  hardships  of  the  voyage.  What  was 
more  natural,  then,  than  that  he  should  come  to  look 
on  all  tragic  emotions  as  but  a  necessary  stage  in  the 
upward  ascent  to  that  high  vantage-ground  where  one 
surveys  the  world  in  calm  contemplation  and  lives  in 
the  emotions  that  make  for  enduring  peace?  In  such 
terms  he  interpreted  the  career  of  Schiller,  whose  voyage 
had  been  unusually  placid: 

For  he  was  ours.    So  let  the  note  of  pride 
Hush  into  silence  all  the  mourner's  ruth; 
In  our  safe  harbor  he  was  fain  to  bide 
And  build  for  aye  after  the  storm  of  youth. 


254  GOETHE 

Even  the  tragic  tale  of  the  lovers  in  the  *  Bride  of 
Corinth  '  ends  with  a  vista  of  peace  at  the  last  among 
the  ancient  gods,  for  whom  forbidden  love  is  no  crime 
but  the  fruition  of  a  natural  desire: 

Let  flames  bring  rest  for  aye  to  those  who  love ! 

When  the  fire  shall  go, 

When  the  ashes  glow, 

We  hasten  to  the  ancient  gods  above. 

The  contemplative  bent  of  the  aging  Goethe,  as  of 
one  listening  to  a  far-away  music  and  hence  unmindful 
of  the  noises  near  at  hand,  not  only  fortified  him  against 

»  life's  asperities  but  invested  his  more  joyous  moods  with 
a  certain  pensive  aloofness.  To  my  thinking  *  Ergo 
Bibamus  '  is  supreme  among  drinking-songs  in  the  Ger- 
man language.     But  how  infinitely  far  it  is  from  the 

-^  ordinary  Anacreontic  strain!  True  the  bibulous  motive 
is  there  in  the  Latin  refrain,  but  one  feels  that  it  is 
only  poetic  feigning.  What  the  poet  is  driving  at  is 
evidently  the  duty  of  joy.  In  a  gentle  crescendo  of  feel- 
ing we  seem  to  be  wafted  away  from  the  earthly  Bac- 
chus and  his  works  and  borne  aloft  to  some  cloudland 
of  pure  aspiration : 

We  pass  thro*  the  portal,  Joy  guideth  our  ways, 
The  clouds  are  agleam,  there's  a  rift  in  the  haze, 
A  vision  of  loveliness  fixes  our  gaze, 
We  clink  and  we  sing  our  bibamus. 


If  we  leave  out  of  account  the  Second  Part  of  '  Faust/ 
a  portion  of  the  '  Divan,'  and  a  number  of  personal  and 
occasional  poems,  by  far  the  larger  part  of  the  other 
verse  written  by  Goethe  during  the  last  quarter  of  his  life 


THE  POET  i255 

is  of  the  gnomic  or  epigrammatic  order.  Love  of  the 
aphorism  and  the  epigram  grew  with  his  advancing  years 
and  he  wrote  an  immense  number  of  each.  He  was  also 
given  to  noting  down  wise  sayings  of  other  men.  In 
time  he  accumulated  a  large  mass  of  gnomic  utterances 
in  prose  and  in  verse,  together  with  opinions,  reflections, 
gibes,  invectives,  innuendoes,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing. 
Some  were  published  during  his  lifetime,  a  large  part 
not  until  long  after  his  death.  Many  of  the  versicles 
would  hardly  have  been  published  at  all  if  his  literary 
executors  and  the  editors  who  came  after  them  had  been 
concerned  to  guard  his  reputation  rather  than  to  print 
every  word  that  had  ever  fallen  from  his  mouth  or  pen. 
What  the  world  has,  under  the  operation  of  the  policy 
adopted,  is  a  demonstration  on  a  large  scale  that  even 
a  very  great  poet-thinker  will  inevitably  accumulate  much 
rubbish  in  his  workshop,  like  any  other  craftsman,  and 
that  it  were  better  he  should  burn  it  betimes  lest  it  fall 
into  the  hands  of  a  too  reverent  posterity. 

But  it  were  hardly  fair  to  tax  posterity  alone  for  the 
poetic  nullity  of  so  much  of  the  later  verse  that  now 
occupies  space  in  the  complete  editions  of  Goethe's  works. 
He  himself  was  quite  capable  of  sinning  against  the 
Holy  Ghost  and  regarding  the  result  without  a  qualm 
of  remorse.  In  the  course  of  time  he  formed  what  may 
be  called  the  riming  habit.  Verse-making  was  no  longer 
a  matter  of  poetry  as  he  had  once  conceived  it;  not  an 
affair  of  emotional  fervor,  of  the  lyric  mood,  or  of  happy 
inspiration,  but  rather  of  the  day's  work.  He  was  a 
poet,  people  expected  him  to  make  verses;  and  he  did 
make  them — for  autograph  albums,  for  birthdays,  wed- 
dings, and  other  occasions  such  as  are  wont  to  breed 


256  GOETHE 

unnecessary  verse.  Goethe  attended  to  this  business 
without  much  *  plaguing  of  the  gracious  Muses.'  His 
'  Karlsbad  Poems,'  addressed  to  the  Empress  of  Austria 
after  he  had  basked  in  her  favor  a  little  while  in  1810, 
are  such  as  might  have  been  produced  by  any  court  poet- 
aster— adulatory  beyond  measure  and  poetically  medi- 
ocre. And  there  are  others  in  this  kind  that  can  give  no 
pleasure  to  the  lover  of  poetry. 

But  the  bane  of  his  later  years  was  not  so  much  the 
outside  demand  for  occasional  verses  as  rather  his  habit 
of  using  the  verse-form  to  record  his  mental  reactions 
to  everything  under  the  sun.  This  habit  inevitably  called 
into  being  a  vast  quantity  of  verse  which  lacks  the  soul 
of  poetry,  albeit  the  gnomic  type  has  an  ancient  and 
honorable  history  which  prevents  us  from  denying  it 
the  name  of  poetry  altogether.  He  wrote  it  in  his  pur- 
suit of  intellectual  culture — to  clarify  his  ideas,  to  define 
his  impressions,  to  portray  his  ego.  What  interested 
him,  what  was  a  true  reflex  of  his  individuality — 
whether  in  prose  or  verse  did  not  greatly  matter — was 
worth  while.  If  critics  did  not  like  his  ways  they  were 
welcome  to  think  ill  of  him.  He  did  not  care.  There 
is  one  of  his  '  Tame  Xenia '  which  might  be  Englished 
without  grave  lese-majesty  thus: 

Take  my  life  in  one  big  chunk, 
Precisely  as  I  lead  it; 
Other  men  sleep  off  their  drunk, 
Mine's  on  paper — read  it. 

What  has  just  been  said  of  the  later  Goethe's  verse 
implies  nothing  more  than  that  he  too,  like  Wordsworth 
and  many  another,  needs  to  be  read  in  a  selection  of 
what  is  best.    Such  an  anthology,  picking  up  a  good  song 


THE  POET  257 

here  and  there  and  drawing  at  will  on  the  lyric  por- 
tions of  '  Faust '  and  the  mellow  Indian  Summer  of  the 
'  Divan/  would  show  that  the  lyrism  of  an  earlier  day 
was  not  gone  beyond  recall.  Minerva  was  not  always 
unwilling.  And  such  an  anthology  might  also  include 
a  goodly  number  of  gnomic  versicles  which,  while  they 
appeal  to  the  sophisticated  mind  rather  than  to  the  gen- 
eral heart,  are  yet  so  good  of  their  kind,  so  pithy  and 
so  wise,  that  they  almost  do  the  work  of  poetry  and 
have  rightly  endeared  themselves  to  a  host  of  readers. 
And  as  for  those  arid  stretches  of  unprofitable  verse, 
let  it  be  remembered  at  any  rate  that  the  Altmeister  was 
under  no  illusions  about  what  he  was  doing,  in  the  lit- 
erary any  more  than  in  the  moral  sphere.  He  once 
polished  off  the  fault-finders  thus : 

What  you  say  is  nothing  new, 

Fallible  I  was  and  who  can  doubt  it? 

But  what  you  comic  dullards  say  about  it, 

I  know  it  better  than  you. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  DRAMATIST 

By  a  dramatist  let  us  here  understand  primarily  a 
writer  of  plays  to  be  acted  or  suitable  for  acting.  I  say 
primarily,  not  wishing  to  press  my  definition  in  a  doc- 
trinaire spirit.  The  closet-drama,  as  it  is  called,  may 
be  well  worth  while  as  literature,  and  good  literature 
is  a  flower  to  be  prized  wherever  we  find  it  growing. 
Nothing  is  gained  by  giving  the  literary  drama  a  bad 
name.  If  a  writer  feels  inwardly  impelled  to  the  dialog 
form,  likes  to  divide  his  matter  into  so-called  acts  and 
scenes  and  to  provide  for  exits  and  entrances,  by  all 
means  let  him  follow  his  bent,  even  if  he  have  no  com- 
mission from  either  dramatic  muse  or  choose  to  renounce 
the  honors  of  the  stage.  There  is  surely  room  in  the 
world  for  every  form  of  art  that  is  capable  of  giving 
genuine  pleasure  to  anyone.  I  have  no  quarrel  even  with 
those  who  say  they  find  it  more  edifying  to  read  a  great 
play  than  to  see  it  acted. 

Nevertheless  it  is  true  that  drama  was  originally  some- 
thing done  for  the  entertainment  of  spectators,  and  such 
must  always  continue  to  be  its  essential  character.  First 
and  foremost  it  is  a  communal  function,  only  secondarily 
a  form  of  literary  self-expression.  Its  business  is  to 
interest  and  hold  the  spectator.  To  do  that  is  its  highest 
merit,  not  to  do  that  its  gravest  shortcoming.  Here 
and  nowhere  else  is  the  great  criterion  in  matters  of 

258 


THE  DRAMATIST  259 

the  art  dramatic.  A  song  may  give  pleasure  as  literature, 
may  delight  a  deaf  person;  still,  that  which  makes  it 
delightful  is  a  certain  quality — we  call  it  lyric — which 
ultimately  reduces  to  singableness.  And  just  as  the  high- 
est test  of  a  song  is  singableness,  so  the  highest  test  of 
a  play  is  playableness. 


But  now  it  happens  that  the  spectator,  that  courted 
fellow-being  who  is  to  be  interested  and  held,  is  a  highly 
variable  personage.  He  varies  with  the  time  and  place, 
with  the  quality  of  his  taste,  with  the  degree  of  his  edu- 
cation and  refinement.  In  fact,  he  is  only  an  abstrac- 
tion, like  the  economic  man,  or  like  the  benevolent  reader 
to  whom  authors  used  to  address  their  books.  A  mod- 
ern British  scholar  has  expressed  the  opinion  that  a 
Greek  audience  such  as  assembled  in  the  theater  of 
Dionysos  at  Athens  to  see  a  play  of  Sophocles  was  equal 
in  average  intelligence  to  the  British  House  of  Com- 
mons. This  may  be  so,  or  it  may  not;  there  is  no  way 
of  settling  the  question  positively.  But  what  all  must 
agree  to  is  that  the  Athenian  audience  was  at  least  very 
different  from  that  which  gathered,  say,  at  the  Globe 
Theater  in  London  to  see  a  new  play  of  Shakspere;  just 
as  this  too  was  very  different  from  the  crowd  that  flocked 
to  see  a  medieval  passion-play.  What  held  the  one  audi- 
ence spell-bound  would  have  driven  away  the  other  in 
bewilderment  and  disgust. 

The  difference  is  not  merely  of  language,  religion, 
and  social  organization.  What  interests  the  spectator 
in  a  theater  is  always  dependent  on  the  mores  of  the 
community — that  unfelt  but  irresistible  network  of  habit 


26o  GOETHE 

and  tradition  that  holds  us  all  in  bondage.  To  suppose 
that  there  are  any  eternal  verities  of  human  nature  capa- 
ble of  yielding  universal  principles  of  dramatic  art  is 
to  make  a  supposition  that  runs  counter  to  all  history 
and  all  psychology.  Just  now,  in  a  considerable  portion 
of  the  Occident,  there  is  an  insistent  demand  for  what 
is  called  fidelity  to  life.  But  if  by  that  phrase  we  mean 
the  life  actually  lived  by  the  spectators,  it  is  to  be  said, 
speaking  broadly,  that  that  is  precisely  what  they  do  not 
want  and  never  have  wanted.  There  is  no  doctrine,  rule 
or  definition  that  is  applicable  to  all  times  and  places. 
Drama  is  a  vindication  of  the  mores  under  trial,  and 
the  mores  are  infinitely  various. 

These  observations  are  meant  to  suggest  the  point  of 
view  from  which  Goethe  is  here  to  be  regarded  as  a 
dramatist.  He  is  to  be  considered  as  a  playwright,  and 
so  far  as  he  was  not  a  good  playwright  his  limitations 
are  to  be  frankly  pointed  out  without  too  much  aw'e  of 
his  general  literary  prestige,  which  was  due  only  in  small 
part  to  his  work  for  the  theater.  At  the  same  time  it 
is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  there  are  no  absolute  stand- 
ards in  the  dramatic  sphere,  and  that  every  writer  of 
plays  is  the  product  of  his  race,  epoch,  and  surround- 
ings. Goethe  was  a  German,  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  inheritor  of  particular  traditions,  a  resident  for  the 
most  part  of  a  small  town,  where  life  was  in  some  ways 
parochial.  What  is  perhaps  most  important  of  all  to 
remember  is  that  his  plays  did  not  grow  out  of  the  needs 
of  a  theater,  except  the  few  unimportant  ones  that  were 
called  into  being  by  the  exigencies  of  the  amateurs  at 
Weimar. 

On  the  whole  it  was  no  very  large  part  of  his  energy 


THE  DRAMATIST  261 

that  went  to  the  making  of  plays.  In  his  youth  he  com- 
pleted eight  productions  in  the  dramatic  form  and  began 
several  others  that  he  never  finished.  Of  the  eight,  three 
were  five-act  plays  sufficient  in  mere  quantity  for  an 
evening's  entertainment.  These  are  '  Gotz,'  '  Clavigo,' 
and  '  Stella.'  '  The  Fellow-culprits,'  a  three-act  rogues' 
comedy  in  alexandrine  verse,  is  playable,  but  it  has  rarely 
been  played,  except  at  Weimar  under  the  eye  of  its  author, 
who  had  a  fondness  for  it.  The  others  of  the  eight 
hardly  rise  above  the  plane  of  bagatelles.  The  '  Lover's 
Wayward  Humor '  might  do  at  a  pinch  for  a  curtain- 
raiser.  '  Gods,  Heroes,  and  Wieland  '  is  a  thin  literary 
skit  dashed  off  in  a  few  hours.  '  Satyros  '  and  '  Pater 
Brey '  are  satirical  take-offs  whose  interest  is  altogether 
local  and  personal.  They  could  not  be  played  unless  it 
were  before  an  audience  of  Goetheforscher.  The  tale 
thus  reduces  to  three  major  plays,  one  of  which,  '  Stella,' 
is  unavailable  for  the  stage  because  of  the  abysmal  unin- 
terestingness  of  its  hero. 

The  next  ten  years,  Goethe's  first  decade  in  Weimar, 
brought  forth  '  Brother  and  Sister,'  '  Lila,'  the  '  Birds,' 
and  one  or  two  other  trifles  for  local  consumption.  They 
have  virtually  no  stage  history  outside  of  Weimar.  To  this 
period  also  belong  '  Iphigenie,'  '  Tasso,'  and  *  Egmont  * 
— three  plays  in  which  a  rare  but  not  pre-eminently 
dramatic  genius  found  expression.  After  that  there  are 
no  more  works  that  are  of  importance  from  our  pres- 
ent point  of  view.  The  *  Grand-Cophta  '  is  without  dis- 
tinction of  any  kind,  save  that  Goethe  wrote  it,  and  the 
completed  part  of  the  '  Natural  Daughter,'  while  rich 
in  poetry,  is  theatrically  null.  There  remain  a  few 
musical  plays  of  which  the  inspiration  is  lyric,  and  a 


262  GOETHE 

long  dramatic  poem  which  is  admittedly  the  masterpiece 
of  German  poetry.  But  while  '  Faust '  is  often  played 
and  has  its  own  fascination  on  the  stage,  it  has  won  the 
world  for  reasons  not  connected  with  its  dramatic  power. 
So  Goethe's  total  achievement  in  this  field  amounts 
to  half  a  dozen  plays  that  are  actable.  In  such  a  num- 
ber there  is  certainly  no  suggestion  of  remarkable  opu- 
lence. When  one  recalls  that  Sophocles  wrote  more  than 
a  hundred,  Euripides  nearly  a  hundred,  Shakspere  forty, 
Moliere  over  thirty,  and  Ibsen  over  twenty,  not  to  men- 
tion Lope  de  Vega's  imputed  eighteen  hundred,  it  is  plain 
that  Goethe  does  not  belong  in  the  company  of  great 
dramatists  remarkable  for  their  fecundity.  His  play- 
making  was  always  an  avocation;  it  never  claimed  the 
entire  man  except  for  a  few  weeks  at  a  time.  Of  the 
six  or  seven  plays  just  referred  to,  only  one,  *  Clavigo,' 
was  made  at  a  single  casting  of  the  fluid  material.  The 
others  were  the  result  of  interrupted  efforts  extending 
over  periods  ranging  from  two  years  to  sixty. 

II 

Aside  from  the  artistic  genius  of  a  gifted  individual 
two  factors  seem  to  be  pre-eminently  necessary  for  the 
production  of  notable  drama:  first,  a  large  and  stirring 
public  life;  second,  a  flourishing  theater.  These  con- 
ditions have  been  present  wherever  dramatic  works  of 
permanent  interest — such  as  we  vaguely  call  great — 
have  come  into  being.  Without  the  large  and  stirring 
public  life  the  would-be  dramatist  is  apt  to  remain  paro- 
chial in  his  outlook  and  can  hardly  create  that  which 
will  carry  beyond  the  bounds  of  his  own  time  and  place. 
It  is  often  said  nowadays  that  the  common  man — tinker, 


THE  DRAMATIST  263 

clodhopper,  or  sot — may  be  made  as  interesting  for  the 
purposes  of  art  as  the  potentate  or  the  large  adventurer; 
that  the  secret  lies  in  the  hozv  rather  than  the  what.  The 
doctrine  may  have  a  certain  vahdity  in  the  domain  of 
prose  fiction,  but  in  the  drama,  broadly  speaking,  it  is 
not  true.  Taken  away  from  its  time  and  place  the  paro- 
chial tragedy  or  comedy  makes  dull  entertainment  on  the 
boards.  Such  interest  as  it  now  and  then  has  for  per- 
sons of  the  larger  outlook  is  apt  to  be  due  to  the  felt 
contrast  between  the  little  world  and  the  great.  Or 
perhaps  there  is  an  unconscious  effort  to  find  in  the  little 
world  a  symbol  of  the  great.  In  either  case  the  great 
world  is  the  real  psychological  basis  of  the  effect  pro- 
duced. 

The  second  factor,  a  flourishing  theater,  is  as  vital 
to  the  drama  as  an  orchestra  to  orchestral  music.  It  is 
the  medium  in  which  the  dramatist  has  his  being,  the 
instrument  on  which  he  plays.  For  him  to  know  human 
nature  in  its  individual  reactions  is  not  enough;  he  must 
also  be  an  expert  in  the  mass-suggestion  of  the  stage. 
This  expertness,  involving  as  it  does  the  results  of  experi- 
ence, comes  only  with  experience.  The  great  play- 
wrights have  generally  been  professional  men  wedded 
to  a  calling  which  was  their  life.  Often  actors  them- 
selves or  at  any  rate  working  in  conjunction  with  actors, 
they  have  made  the  theater  while  at  the  same  time  the 
theater  was  making  them.  Along  with  an  assured  technic 
in  minor  matters  they  acquired  a  knowledge  of  those 
broad  effects  which  appeal  permanently  to  human  nature 
because  they  drive  at  large  issues.  It  is  thus  that  the 
grand  style  in  drama  has  everywhere  been  developed. 
When  the  way  has  been  shown  by  the  great  professional 


264  GOETHE 

playwrights  It  may  be  followed  with  more  or  less  of 
insight  by  dilettanti  who  are  not  of  the  theatrical  guild. 
Even  the  grand  style  may  be  copied,  but  the  counterfeit 
is  quickly  detected. 

Now  if  we  look  at  Goethe's  environment  with  respect 
to  these  two  prime  factors  of  great  dramatic  art  we 
shall  see  that  it  was  decidedly  unfavorable.  He  had 
indeed  by  nature  or  acquired  in  boyhood  a  strong 
bent  for  the  dramatic  form  of  expression.  It  was  not 
an  exclusive  bent,  for  the  song  and  the  story  attracted 
him  almost  equally.  But  the  play  was  usually  that  which 
engaged  his  more  ambitious  musings,  and  so  strong  and 
persistent  was  his  impulse  in  that  direction  that  it  might 
well  have  been  taken  for  the  call  of  destiny. 

But  given  a  potentially  great  German  dramatist  in  the 
third  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  where  was  he 
to  get  the  practical  schooling  of  the  stage,  and  what 
was  he  to  write  about?  The  drama,  as  a  dignified  form 
of  art  in  which  persons  of  intelligence  could  take  an 
interest,  was  a  new  thing  in  the  Germany  of  that  day. 
It  was  hardly  out  of  its  swaddling-clothes  even  at  Leipsic, 
where  it  had  lately  been  born  under  the  fostering  care 
of  Professor  Gottsched  and  Madame  Neuber.  As  is  well 
known,  they  took  their  cue  from  France.  It  was  here, 
in  connection  with  this  puny  theater  at  Leipsic,  that 
young  Lessing  served  his  apprenticeship  to  the  stage  in 
the  two  years  just  preceding  Goethe's  birth.  He  wrote 
half  a  dozen  prose  comedies  in  the  French  style,  call- 
ing his  characters  by  such  names  as  Damis,  Chrysander, 
Theophrast,  Wumshater  (woman-hater),  and  so  forth. 
They  are  the  best  plays  written  by  any  German  at  that 
time,  but  they  have  nothing  to  do  with  German  life. 


THE  DRAMATIST  265 

Types  of  character,  plots,  situations,  intrigues,  all  bear 
the  stamp  of  a  literary  importation. 

Some  five  years  later,  having  meanwhile  read  omniv- 
orously  in  the  literature  of  the  drama,  ancient  and  mod- 
ern, Lessing  wrote  his  '  Miss  Sara  Sampson '  as  an 
experiment  in  middle-class  tragedy.  There  was  no 
reason  for  giving  such  an  experiment  an  English  set- 
ting, save  that  he  had  been  reading  Lillo,  Congreve,  and 
Richardson.  By  this  time  he  had  become  deeply  inter- 
ested in  the  theory  of  tragedy  and  was  working  toward 
the  conclusion  that  the  German  taste  in  matters  dramatic 
was  more  akin  to  the  English  genius  than  to  the  French. 
Hence  his  savage  attack,  in  the  '  Letters  on  Literature  ' 
(i759)»  on  the  French  proclivities  of  Gottsched,  and 
a  little  later,  in  the  *  Hamburg  Dramaturgy'  (1767- 
1768),  his  vigorous  assault  on  the  French  classical  trag- 
edy itself.  Here  his  main  thesis  was  that  the  French 
dramatists,  while  professing  to  follow  the  canons  of 
Aristotle,  had  really  misconceived  him  and  failed  to 
arouse  the  emotions  of  pity  and  fear,  whereas  Shak- 
spere,  knowing  nothing  of  the  Stagyrite's  rules,  had 
nevertheless  attained  in  a  very  eminent  degree  the  very 
end  which  the  rules  had  in  view. 

Lessing's  critical  writings,  fortified  by  the  creative 
masterstroke  of  '  Minna  von  Barnhelm,'  quickly  brought 
the  question  of  a  *  national '  German  drama  to  the  fore- 
front of  public  interest.  Playhouses  and  dramatic  crit- 
icism began  to  abound.  Meanwhile  a  much-needed 
emancipative  influence  was  at  work  in  Herder  and  the 
so-called  storm-and-stress.  The  inveterate  habit  of 
looking  to  France  was  at  last  breaking  down,  and  many 
were  looking  to  England  instead.     But  what  was  to  be 


266  GOETHE 

gained,  said  Herder  in  effect,  by  substituting  one  alien 
tyranny  for  another?  What,  even  if  the  new  tyranny 
vaunted  the  authority  of  a  better-understood  Aristotle? 
Who  was  Aristotle  anyway  ?  For  Lessing  he  was  nature's 
infallible  law-giver.  For  Herder  he  was  simply  a  Greek 
of  a  particular  period,  who  had  seen  a  certain  type  of 
serious  drama  evolved  out  of  peculiar  national  conditions, 
and  had  then  ably  explained  how  the  plays  were  made. 
But  the  great  desideratum,  said  Herder,  was  that  the  Ger- 
mans should  imitate  no  one,  follow  no  one's  rules,  but 
be  themselves  and  express  their  own  national  genius. 

Thus  there  were  three  currents  of  opinion  and  prac- 
tice with  regard  to  the  drama.  First,  the  French  classic 
tradition  still  had  its  friends,  among  whom,  for  a  while 
at  least,  was  Wieland.  Secondly,  there  were  the  storm- 
and-stress  playwrights  who  wrote  formless  tragedies 
of  disordered  passion,  calling  them,  rather  curiously, 
by  the  name  of  '  English.'  Finally,  there  was  a  current 
best  represented  by  Lessing's  '  Emiha  Galotti.'  This, 
while  employing  prose  and  dealing  with  modern  life,  laid 
stress  on  a  closely  knit  and  well-ordered  plot  and  aimed 
to  follow  the  principles,  if  not  the  rules,  of  Aristotle. 

In  all  this  effort  conservatives  and  radicals  alike  were 
dreaming  of  a  new  '  national '  drama.  But  a  national 
art  implies  a  nation,  and  there  was  no  such  thing  as  a 
German  nation.  No  tie  save  that  of  language,  and  that 
but  imperfectly,  united  the  many  separate  states  of  which 
the  empire  was  composed.  These  states  were  ruled  for 
the  most  part  by  autocratic  princelings  who  were  with- 
out horizon  and  hide-bound  in  the  vicious  traditions  of 
their  class.  There  was  no  public  life  or  body  of  inter- 
ests that  could  justly  be  called  national.    No  city  focused 


THE  DRAMATIST  267 

the  intellectual  life  of  the  German-speaking  people  as 
a  whole.  For  centuries  there  had  been  no  real  national 
heroes,  no  epochs  felt  as  glorious.  Organized  religion 
had  become  an  unlovely  affair  of  contentious  creeds  that 
no  longer  thrilled  to  great  emotions.  There  were  no 
august  traditions  anywhere.  That  exultant  feeling  of 
nationality,  which  breathes  in  the  literature  of  all  the 
great  epochs  did  not  exist.  Only  the  germs  of  it  were 
there  in  the  excitement  produced  by  the  victories  of 
Frederick  the  Great. 

Ill 

Such  was  the  conjuncture  in  which  Goethe's  youth  fell. 
What  wonder  if  he  found  his  themes,  not  in  the  con- 
flicts of  the  great  world,  in  deeds  of  high  emprize,  or 
the  clash  of  impetuous  wills,  but  in  the  inner  crises  of 
the  soul?  His  earliest  impressions  of  the  stage  came 
to  him  from  the  French  plays  that  he  saw  in  Frank- 
fort when  he  was  a  boy  of  eight  or  nine.  So  long  as 
he  lived  there  the  town  had  no  German  theater.  Hence 
an  early  set  of  his  mind  toward  the  alexandrine  form, 
which  in  German,  from  the  very  nature  of  the  language, 
is  undramatic — a  bookish  thing,  like  the  sonnet.  It  is 
capable  of  stately  effects  and  of  pretty  effects;  but  it 
can  not  be  made  to  talk  and  its  mincing  gait  is  fatal 
to  all  vigorous  dramatic  expression.  The  verse  never 
seems  to  come  from  the  heart,  but  only  from  the  art- 
conscious  head.  So  we  may  pass  by  Goethe's  alexandrine 
plays  as  nothing  more  than  literary  experiments  in  a 
waning  fashion. 

It  is  different  with  '  Gotz  von  Berlichingen,'  which  is 
quite  untrammeled  by  any  obtrusive  art.     The  general 


268  GOETHE 

effect  of  Goethe's  sojourn  at  Strassburg  was  to  make 
an  end,  for  the  time  being,  of  all  his  French  prepos- 
sessions. Reading  Shakspere  and  listening  to  Herder's 
gospel  of  a  full-blooded  national  art,  he  had  come  to 
a  state  of  mind  which  was  very  like  an  explosion  of 
wrath  at  the  fool's  paradise  in  which  he  had  been  culti- 
vating the  literary  amenities.  Particularly  he  seems  to 
have  been  troubled  by  the  unities  and  the  verse-form 
of  the  older  drama  and  by  its  tenuous  plots,  which 
reflected  only  the  life  of  the  gentry  and  but  a  little  of 
that.  The  violence  of  his  revolt  is  a  bit  surprising  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  it  was  perfectly  natural  and  involved 
no  claims  that  were  not  readily  admissible.  That  a  young 
writer  may  try  experiments  in  defiance  of  convention 
is  one  of  the  literary  rights  of  man  which  no  one  can 
gainsay.    Life  would  hardly  be  tolerable  if  it  were  not  so. 

It  should  never  be  forgotten  in  thinking  of  Goethe 
as  a  playwright  that  '  Gotz  von  Berlichingen '  was  noth-. 
ing  but  a  literary  experiment.  It  was  not  written  for 
the  stage,  the  possibility  of  its  being  acted  did  not  figure 
in  its  author's  thoughts.  There  is  no  evidence  that  he 
was  even  languidly  interested  in  the  theater  at  the  time 
of  writing  it.  Some  three  or  four  years  before,  while 
a  student  at  Leipsic,  he  had  seen  a  few  plays,  but  there 
is  nothing  in  his  letters  to  indicate  that  he  was  particu- 
larly interested  in  the  histrionic  art.  Certainly  he  was 
not  stage-struck,  as  young  Lessing  had  been  in  the  same 
place  twenty  years  before.  For  Goethe  the  theater  was 
just  a  casual  diversion,  not  an  institution  that  he  thought 
it  worth  while  to  study. 

Nor  did  the  stage  come  into  his  purview  during  his 
illness  and  convalescence,  or  afterwards  at  Strassburg 


THE  DRAMATIST  269 

tinder  Herder's  tuition.  Herder  was  a  bookman  pecul- 
iarly lacking  in  the  dramatic  gift;  a  preacher,  teacher, 
and  theorist  who  saw  everything  from  the  historical  point 
of  view  and  could  hardly  have  written  a  playable  scene 
to  save  his  life.  In  his  enthusiasm  for  Shakspere  what 
Herder  saw  was  the  opulence  of  the  national  poet,  his 
immense  variety,  his  wonderful  ensembles,  capable  of 
thrilling  the  solitary  reader  with  a  sense  of  life's  tor- 
rential grandeur.  For  Shakspere  as  a  stage  artist  en- 
gaged in  the  business  of  providing  entertainment  for 
an  audience  in  a  theater,  Herder  had  no  eye  at  all. 

So  it  was  that  when  the  home-coming  student,  find- 
ing himself  with  time  on  his  hands  in  dull  Frankfort — 
no  theater  anywhere  around — set  about  '  dramatizing ' 
an  old  autobiography  for  his  own  amusement,  it  was  a 
purely  literary  problem  that  he  attacked. 

What  he  proposed  to  do  was  to  make  an  epoch  of  the 
German  past  relive  in  its  fulness,  variety,  and  charac- 
teristic flavor.  This  could  best  be  done,  he  thought,  in  a 
series  of  dramatic  pictures  showing  Gotz  in  his  total 
environment;  in  the  stress  of  his  turbulent  life,  in  his 
relation  to  his  own  household,  to  his  retainers,  and  to 
the  outside  world.  Of  course  the  character  of  Gotz  had 
to  be  treated  sympathetically;  this  meant  that  the  intrin- 
sically odious  system  of  private  warfare  must  be  invested 
with  an  idealizing  halo,  and  that  the  organs  of  the  state, 
the  church,  and  the  law  must  be  presented  in  an  unfavor- 
able light.  Hence  the  conception  of  Gotz  as  a  martyr 
to  liberty,  which  in  reality  he  was  not  at  all.  Hence  also 
the  invention,  as  a  foil  to  the  loyal  Gotz,  of  the  treach- 
erous Weislingen,  and  of  the  dazzling  coquet  Adelheid, 
who  was  needed  to  work  Weislingen's  fall. 


270  GOETHE 

In  working  out  his  details  with  the  pen  the  young 
enthusiast  thought  precious  little  of  the  convenience  of 
actors  or  of  how  his  ensemble  would  strike  a  specta- 
tor. Why  should  he  have  thought  of  these  things  when 
what  he  was  doing  was  just  a  private  affair  of  his  own? 
If  the  separate  scenes  were  vigorously  drawn,  had  the 
savor  of  life,  and  were  true  to  the  spirit  of  the  epoch, 
what  mattered  it  whether  they  were  all  duly  motivated 
and  logically  connected?  What  mattered  it  whether  the 
divers  separate  effects  converged  to  a  total  effect  at  the 
end?  It  had  not  been  so  in  life,  why  then  should  it 
be  so  in  the  picture,  which  was  a  copy  of  life?  Why 
put  on  fetters  of  any  kind  in  writing  something  which 
was  not  to  be  played  and  whose  interest  was  to  be  a 
diffused  pictorial  interest? 

The  breezy  radicalism  that  pervades  '  Gotz,'  together 
with  the  honest  life-likeness  of  the  scenes,  proved  to  be 
its  strength  with  the  public.  It  is  a  play  without  great 
characters,  great  action,  great  passion,  or  great  thought. 
For  who  can  be  much  impressed  in  the  long  run  by  the 
fine  talk  about  freedom,  when  it  means  freedom  to  kid- 
nap, rob,  and  kill  ?  Love  plays  a  rather  uninspiring  role, 
religion  and  patriotism  none  whatever.  The  outstand- 
ing emotion  is  that  of  personal  loyalty.  There  are  no 
large  issues  except  that  of  public  order,  as  to  which 
one  is  expected  to  take  the  wrong  side.  The  language 
is  conversational  prose,  realistically  shaded  to  the  social 
status  of  the  speakers  and  to  the  nature  of  the  business 
in  hand.  So  we  miss  the  appeal  of  noble  diction,  even 
as  we  miss  the  other  lures  of  the  grand  style. 

And  yet,  just  because  the  effort  to  achieve  the  grand 
style  by  imitation  had  degenerated  in  the  hands  of  Ger- 


THE  DRAMATIST  271 

man  writers  into  an  empty  formalism  which  had  no  room 
in  it  for  the  red  blood  of  human  nature — just  for  this 
reason  the  freshness  of  *  Gotz  von  Berlichingen '  proved 
irresistibly  attractive  to  the  public  of  that  day.  A  bet- 
ter play  from  the  technical  point  of  view,  such  a  play 
as  the  author  of  '  Emilia  Galotti '  might  have  approved, 
would  inevitably  have  proved  thinner  in  substance  and 
so  have  failed  to  arouse  the  enthusiasm  of  the  literary 
insurrectos  who  now  fell  into  line  behind  Goethe  as  their 
acknowledged  leader. 

And  after  all,  there  was  a  species  of  higher  wisdom 
in  the  general  formula  of  '  Gotz,'  for  what  average  spec- 
tators in  the  theater  demand  is  to  be  interested  all  along 
in  what  is  going  on  at  the  moment — not  to  be  emotion- 
ally prepared  for  something  that  is  coming  at  the  end 
of  the  fifth  act.  It  is  only  the  sophisticated  critic,  think- 
ing it  over  afterwards  as  he  examines  the  text  under 
his  study-lamp,  who  is  much  given  to  philosophizing  and 
scanning  the  details  to  see  whether  they  are  all  in  har- 
mony with  the  approved  rules  of  dramatic  art.  This 
accounts  for  such  moderate  popularity  as  *  Gotz '  has 
enjoyed  and  still  continues  to  enjoy  on  the  stage.  It 
set  the  vogue  for  a  loosely  constructed  prose  play  which 
should  aim  at  variety  and  verisimilitude  rather  than  at 
artistic  perfection.  The  new  type  embodied  the  very 
theatrical  wisdom  to  which  Goethe  later  gave  expression 
by  the  mouth  of  the  Director  in  the  Prelude  to  *  Faust.* 

'Tis  mass  alone  by  which  you  reach  the  masses. 

IV 

In  his  old  age  Goethe  said  to  Eckermann  in  effect 
that  he  might  have  gone  on  and  written  a  dozen  other 


272  GOETHE 

plays  in  the  style  of  '  Gotz  von  Berlichingen/  But  this 
was  probably  an  illusion;  one  does  not  see  where  they 
could  have  come  in.  He  had  shot  his  bolt,  and  it  was 
the  only  one  in  his  quiver  of  that  particular  kind.  He 
was  not  yet  so  interested  in  large  public  affairs  that  he 
could  have  found  pleasure  in  wTiting  more  plays  hav- 
ing to  do  with  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  Political  and 
ecclesiastical  tyranny  did  not  really  come  home  to  him 
as  a  citizen  of  Frankfort.  And  hopeless  fighting  in  a 
past  age  of  anarchy  was  not  really  to  his  taste  as  it  de- 
veloped in  the  days  of  his  youth. 

Not  that  the  spirit  of  revolt  in  him  was  quelled  or 
had  become  quiescent;  it  was  still  there  as  a  smolder- 
ing fire  that  might  and  did  break  out  in  new  flames  of 
tragic  conflict  between  the  passion  for  freedom  and  its 
powerful  enemies.  But  it  came  over  him  that  the  prob- 
lem was  much  broader  and  deeper  than  he  had  shown 
it  in  his  belligerent  knight  of  the  sixteenth  century.  There 
were  graver  obstacles  to  man's  freedom  than  the  petty 
tyrannies  and  oppressions  of  a  long-past  epoch;  worse 
adversaries  than  a  dull-witted  bishop,  a  treacherous 
poltroon  of  a  courtier,  and  a  beautiful  scheming  widow. 
The  great  enemy  was  the  nature  of  things,  the  total  pres- 
sure of  life. 

So  his  new  or  amplified  formula  for  tragedy  became 
something  like  this :  a  disastrous  struggle  of  the  individual 
with  his  environment  in  the  effort  to  live  out  his  own  life 
in  his  own  way.  The  environment  might  be,  as  it  had 
been  in  '  Gotz,'  the  arrangements  of  human  society  at  a 
particular  epoch,  but  it  might  also  be  the  irremediable 
nature  of  things.  Revolt  against  the  power  and  authority 
of  the  king  of  the  gods  was  to  have  been  the  tragic 


THE  DRAMATIST  273 

motive  of  '  Prometheus.'  Revolt  against  the  limitations 
of  human  knowledge  and  the  jejuneness  of  a  purely 
intellectual  existence  was  the  starting-point  of  *  Faust ' ; 
only  there  the  patient  was  to  be  cured  instead  of  chafing 
himself  to  death  against  the  chains.  Such  a  concep- 
tion of  the  tragic  could  make  little  use  of  virile  strong- 
willed  heroes,  like  Julius  Caesar  or  Mahomet;  it  was 
better  served  by  moral  weaklings  whose  weakness  might 
become  their  tragic  guilt.  But  men  who  do  not  know 
their  own  minds,  are  pulled  this  way  and  that  by  vola- 
tile impulse  or  bad  advice,  and  come  to  some  bad  end 
from  mere  lack  of  ordinary  stamina,  can  not  easily  be 
made  interesting  on  the  stage.  They  approach  too  near 
the  pathological. 

It  was  therefore  unfortunate  for  Goethe's  prestige 
as  a  dramatist  that,  after  the  brilliant  literary  success 
of  '  Gotz  von  Berlichingen,'  his  thoughts  ran  more  and 
more  on  characters  of  the  Weislingen  and  Werther  type, 
so  that  he  was  led  to  turn  his  hand  to  the  writing  of 
such  plays  as  *  Clavigo  '  and  *  Stella.'  The  predilec- 
tion is  easy  to  account  for,  perhaps  it  was  inevitable. 
Having  himself  a  dubious  record  of  inconstancy  in 
love,  eager  to  make  the  most  of  life  in  some  way  not 
yet  clearly  defined,  jealous  of  his  freedom,  he  was  just 
the  man  to  agonize  over  the  marriage  question.  To  be 
linked  to  one  woman  for  good  and  all  was  a  fate  that  had 
terrible  possibilities,  and  yet  woman  was  a  necessity  of 
his  existence.  So  his  imagination  was  captivated  by  the 
figure  of  the  fickle  lover,  whom  his  mind's  eye  saw  in 
divers  shapes  and  situations,  in  various  degrees  of  moral 
delinquency.     Man's  inconstancy  to  woman  became  for 


274  GOETHE 

him,  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say,  the  root  of  tragic  mis- 
fortune. 

All  this  is  psychologically  intelligible  enough,  but  the 
fickle  lover,  especially  when  his  fickleness  is  all  there 
is  of  him,  is  a  poor  asset  for  the  dramatist,  unless  it 
were  in  farce.  By  no  finesse  of  art  can  he  be  made 
largely  interesting.  Off  the  stage  society  is  rather  toler- 
ant of  inconstancy;  under  circumstances  w^e  approve  it. 
But  no  one,  not  even  the  radicals  who  rail  at  monog- 
amous marriage  itself,  regards  it  as  admirable.  Hence 
it  is  that  in  the  serious  drama,  which  is  a  vindication 
of  the  mores  under  trial,  the  fickle  lover  repels  sympathy. 
Even  when  he  has  a  case  before  the  bar  of  reason  we 
do  not  care  to  hear  it  publicly  tried  on  the  stage. 

In  '  Clavigo '  the  heart  of  the  matter  is  the  tragic  fate 
of  an  ambitious  youth  whose  career  is  going  to  be  en- 
dangered by  his  engagement  to  a  sickly  girl.  In  such 
a  situation  a  degree  of  hesitancy  on  the  part  of  the  lover 
is  not  only  permissible  but  a  plain  dictate  of  duty.  To 
marry  an  invalid  suffering  from  organic  disease  is  un- 
ethical conduct,  tho  it  is  well  to  remember  that  eugenic 
considerations  were  not  much  taken  into  account  in  the 
sentimental  age  of  the  eighteenth  century,  whether  in 
life  or  in  art.  So  we  have  in  '  Clavigo '  a  tragedy  in 
which  the  hero  has  no  full-fledged  tragic  guilt.  He  does 
not  really  deserve  his  fate.  His  only  fault  consists  in 
his  vacillating,  belying  himself,  and  giving  wrong  rea- 
sons for  right  conduct.  In  the  end  he  is  killed  in  a 
duel  by  Marie's  impetuous  brother,  who  imagines  that 
his  sister  has  died  of  a  broken  heart. 

How  '  Clavigo '  came  into  being  as  the  result 
of  a  sudden  freak  is  known  from  '  Poetry  and  Truth.' 


THE  DRAMATIST  275 

It  was  written  in  a  week  to  meet  the  jesting  challenge 
of  the  temporary  '  wife '  whom  Goethe  happened  to 
be  paired  with  in  a  young  folks'  marriage  game.  As 
the  by-product  of  a  social  frolic  it  is  hardly  a  mark  for 
grave  criticism.  While  technically  a  well-made  play  it 
is  quite  without  any  distinction  of  style  or  any  large 
import.  There  is  nothing  in  it  of  the  world's  inevita- 
ble woe.  It  was  seldom  played  in  Goethe's  lifetime  and 
would  hardly  be  played  now  at  all  but  for  the  glamor 
of  its  author's  name. 

In  the  case  of  '  Stella,'  a  product  of  the  troublous 
year  1775,  there  has  been  a  still  more  decided  rejection 
by  the  stage.  And  no  wonder,  for  it  is  quite  impossi- 
ble to  make  the  play  largely  interesting,  even  as  parlor 
drama.  For  tragedy  it  is  too  farcical,  for  farce,  too 
solemn. 


After  the  year  1775  Goethe's  dramatic  writings  savor 
strongly  of  his  new  environment.  At  Weimar  he  came 
into  relations,  in  a  small  way,  with  the  business  of  play- 
acting, that  being  a  favorite  amusement  of  the  court 
circle.  It  was  only  natural  that  the  author  of  several 
published  plays  should  be  called  in  as  chief  consultant 
when  a  performance  was  to  be  given.  He  also  tried 
himself  as  an  actor.  The  result  of  all  this  experience 
was  that  when,  in  1791,  the  duke  decided  to  rely  no 
longer  on  the  strolling  companies  but  to  have  a  theater 
of  his  own,  he  made  Goethe  director  of  it.  But  those 
amateur  performances  were  very  simple  indeed.  The 
associations  of  the  English  word  '  court '  are  quite  mis- 
leading in  connection  with  little  Weimar,  where  every- 


276  GOETHE 

thing  was  on  a  duodecimo  scale,  poverty  the  permanent 
officer  of  the  day,  and  national  feeling  all  but  non- 
existent. There  was  a  small  bevy  of  the  gentry  who 
were  interested  in  the  amenities,  and  there  was  a  bour- 
geois '  public  '  that  might  on  occasion  fill  a  small  draw- 
ing-room. The  birthday  of  the  duke  or  duchess,  the 
arrival  of  a  blue-blooded  guest,  someone's  little  journey 
to  another  place,  was  an  event. 

Under  such  circumstances  the  making  of  theatrical 
masterpieces  for  the  outside  world  would  have  been  im- 
possible for  a  man  like  Goethe,  even  if  his  thoughts  had 
turned  in  that  direction.  It  is  true  that  Schiller  after- 
wards found  the  Weimar  conditions  favorable  enough; 
but  Schiller  had  a  rare  talent  for  visualizing  the  great 
issues  of  other  days  and  other  lands,  whereas  Goethe 
was  dependent  on  his  own  experience.  He  was  a  born 
*  confessor  '  and  could  write  effectively  only  of  that  which 
concerned  him.  But  what  concerned  him  at  Weimar, 
apart  from  official  duties  and  social  relaxation,  was  the 
improvement  of  his  ego.  It  was  the  problem  of  curing 
his  faults,  acquiring  wisdom,  and  working  out  a  sane 
philosophy  of  individual  perfection.  This  meant  intro- 
spection and  self-comparison.  It  meant  the  study  of 
character  and  motive  as  manifested,  not  so  much  in  pub- 
lic crises  of  the  kind  called  dramatic — those  which  stir 
the  imagination  of  all  men  everywhere — but  rather  in 
the  soul-crises  of  gifted  individuals  needing  to  learn  wis- 
dom in  order  to  steer  their  course  wisely  among  their 
fellow-men. 

So  Goethe  at  Weimar  became  a  specialist  in  personal 
culture  and  wrote  for  a  little  cotery  of  specialists  like 
himself  who  would  understand  him;  turning  his  atten- 


THE  DRAMATIST  277 

tion  not  to  world-events,  or  deeds  of  high  emprize,  or 
the  clash  of  great  historic  forces,  but  to  eccentricities  of 
personal  character  reacting  to  such  trials  and  tribulations 
as  he  himself  had  felt  and  observed. 

Now  it  is  in  this  subtle  and  illuminating  criticism  of 
life  that  Goethe's  value  for  the  modern  man  is  mainly 
to  be  found.  But  such  is  not  the  stuff  of  which  great 
plays  are  made.  The  human  drama  itself  began,  not 
with  reflections  but  with  acts  to  satisfy  needs.  The  re- 
flections were  secondary — came  limping  after.  The 
characteristic  excitement  of  drama  is  the  excitement  of 
seeing  men  dare  and  do  and  win  or  lose — not  the  oppor- 
tunity of  hearing  them  expose  and  expound  their  soul- 
states  or  debate  the  pros  and  cons  of  their  enterprise. 
Hence  the  hall-mark  of  great  drama  is  visible  action 
under  the  stress  of  primal  emotions  whose  driving  force 
is  at  once  understood  by  everybody.  Intellectual  fenc- 
ing and  delicate  analysis  of  emotional  states  are  not 
effective  on  the  stage  except  so  far  as  they  are  obviously 
related  to  notable  action.  The  sophisticated  spectator 
will  prefer  to  get  his  philosophy  by  reading  and  medi- 
tation, while  the  unsophisticated  spectator  is  bewildered 
and  bored. 

In  one  respect  what  has  just  been  said  does  not  apply 
to  *  Egmont,'  for  the  death  of  Egmont  was  a  tragedy  in 
the  life  of  a  nation.  As  we  have  seen,  the  play  was 
begun  by  Goethe  at  Frankfort  in  1775  and  completed 
some  thirteen  years  later.  From  his  references  to  it  in 
*  Poetry  and  Truth '  and  later  in  conversations  with 
Eckermann  one  can  see  how  little  he  was  concerned  with 
the  facts  of  history.  The  real  Egmont  was  hardly  in 
his  mind  at  all.     His  play  is  a  dramatic  study  of  a 


278  GOETHE 

'  demonic  '  character  bearing  the  name  of  Egmont.  As 
such  it  is  highly  interesting  to  read,  and  if  we  except 
portions  of  *  Faust '  it  presents  Goethe's  dramatic  gift 
at  its  very  best.  But  on  the  stage  '  Egmont '  drags.  It 
somehow  lacks  '  go.*  There  is  too  much  reasoning  and 
there  are  scenes  that  have  no  very  obvious  bearing  on 
the  main  issue.  They  are  there  evidently  as  character- 
studies.  Moreover,  such  an  Egmont  as  Goethe  drew, 
so  frivolous  in  his  infatuation  for  a  love-lorn  girl  while 
great  issues  are  pending,  so  blind  to  the  obvious  in  his 
light-hearted  egotism,  must  inevitably  fail  to  win  that 
profounder  tragic  sympathy  which  we  bestow  on  the 
heroes  of  great  tragedy — say  on  Oedipus  and  Lear  and 
Wallenstein.  One  has  a  vague  feeling  that  such  an  Eg- 
mont is  hardly  worth  agonizing  over.  Schiller  was 
eternally  right  in  feeling  that  the  real  Egmont  of  history 
was  a  far  more  tragic  figure  than  the  spurious  Egmont 
of  Goethe's  imagination. 

The  perfect  fruitage  of  Goethe's  dramatic  gift,  as 
grown  in  the  Weimar  hot-house  and  ripened  in  the  sun 
of  Italy,  is  to  be  tasted  in  '  Iphigenie  '  and  '  Tasso.'  Both 
these  plays  have  an  enduring  literary  charm  which  lures 
the  reader  back  again  and  again  to  a  never-failing  pleas- 
ure. It  is  the  charm  of  exquisitely  modulated  language, 
of  soulful  poetry,  of  high  refinement  in  thought  and 
feeling.  In  virtue  of  these  distinctions  they  are  precious 
classics  of  literature.  And  they  are  unique.  There  is 
nothing  else  like  them  anywhere.  As  for  their  acting 
quality  it  has  been  abundantly  shown  that,  given  an 
audience  caring  greatly  for  the  refinements  of  literary 
expression,  and  given  players  fully  imbued  with  the 
Goethean  spirit  in  this  particular  phase  of  it,  *  Iphigenie  * 


THE  DRAMATIST  279 

and  '  Tasso  '  make  good  entertainment  on  the  stage.  But 
their  effect  is  that  of  exquisite  art,  not  that  of  nature 
mirrored.  The  spectator  is  never  carried  away  by  any 
rush  of  elemental  human  feeling. 

It  is  not,  as  used  to  be  said,  that  these  plays  are  cold 
or  statuesque — an  idea  which  must  have  been  due  to  poor 
acting  or  else  to  an  inert  imagination.  They  are  sur- 
charged with  feeling  and  there  is  action  enough  of  a 
certain  kind;  but  it  is  of  the  kind  natural  to  people  habit- 
uated to  self-control  and  having  the  poise  of  high  refine- 
ment. Such  folk  have  their  own  modes  of  expression, 
which  may  seem  cold  to  the  uninitiated  and  yet  be  tense 
with  emotion.  A  gesture,  an  intonation,  a  luminous 
phrase  uttered  with  a  certain  modulation  of  the  voice, 
may  tell  more  of  inner  excitement  than  do  the  bustle 
and  vociferation  of  the  natural  man.  To  refinement  it 
is  the  movements  of  the  spirit,  rather  than  those  of  the 
body,  that  count.  But  the  movements  of  the  spirit  are 
not  dramatic. 

If  then  we  say  that  the  hall-mark  of  great  drama  is 
to  engage  and  hold  the  interest  of  all  sorts  of  men,  it 
must  be  admitted  that  *  Iphigenie  *  and  *  Tasso '  are 
not  great  plays,  because  they  lack  human  breadth.  How 
rich  is  *  Tasso '  in  poetry  and  philosophy  and  refined 
amenity,  how  poor  in  dramatic  substance!  A  brooding 
poet  with  a  deficient  sense  of  reality  is  held  in  high  honor 
at  a  petty  court.  Everyone  flatters  and  coddles  him. 
The  mania  of  persecution  begins  to  afflict  him ;  he  imag- 
ines that  everyone  has  turned  against  him,  becomes 
morbidly  desperate.  Finally,  in  a  tense  moment,  not 
of  amorous  passion,  but  of  general  despair  over  the 
imagined  necessity  of  leaving  his  place  of  residence,  he 


28o  GOETHE 

forgets  the  proprieties  and  kisses  a  princess.  Then  he 
must  go  away. — How  can  ordinary  human  nature  be- 
come greatly  excited  over  such  a  matter  when  it  is 
enacted  on  the  '  boards  that  signify  the  world  '  ? 

With  the  completion  of  '  Tasso '  in  1789  the  career 
of  Goethe  as  a  writer  of  plays  available  for  the  stage  came 
to  an  end.  During  his  long  directorate  of  the  Weimar 
theater,  when  he  was  constantly  scanning  the  horizon  for 
good  plays,  he  himself  failed  to  produce  one.  The  '  Nat- 
ural Daughter '  was  played,  but  once  was  enough,  as  was 
later  the  case  also  with  '  Epimenides.'  There  are 
scenes  in  the  Second  Part  of  '  Faust '  which  produce  a 
noble  effect  on  the  stage,  but  it  is  due  to  their  pictorial 
symbolism.  Speaking  broadly  of  the  later  Goethe,  we 
may  say  that  the  poet,  the  philosopher,  the  man  of  sci- 
ence, the  critic  of  life,  had  wandered  away  from  the 
broad  highways  of  thought  and  feeling  where  ordinary 
men  are  wont  to  travel.  This  unfitted  him  to  be  a 
dramatist. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  NOVELIST 

In  this  chapter  we  shall  be  occupied  with  Goethe  as 
a  story-teller  in  prose,  his  shorter  as  well  as  his  longer 
tales  being  included  under  a  single  rubric.  Interesting  at- 
tempts have  been  made  to  set  out  the  short  story  as  a  lit- 
erary type  by  itself,  differing  in  technic  as  well  as  in 
quantity  from  the  novel.  I  recognize  the  distinction  as 
valid,  but  the  matter  need  not  concern  us  here,  any  more 
than  the  difference  between  a  novel  and  a  romance. 
Goethe  wrote  three  major  stories  such  as  the  Germans 
call  Romane  and  we  commonly  know  as  novels.  Two 
of  these  are  among  the  most  famous  literary  produc- 
tions of  the  eighteenth  century.  He  also  wrote  a  num- 
ber of  short  stories  of  different  kinds  and  theorized  to 
some  extent  on  the  narrative  art.  In  speaking  of  him 
as  a  novelist  I  wish  to  include  this  entire  phase  of  his 
literary  work.  Fictionist  would  be  a  better  word  for 
my  purpose  if  only  it  were  in  more  common  use. 

The  publication  of  the  *  Sufferings  of  Young  Wer- 
ther '  in  1774  gave  the  world  something  new  in  prose 
fiction.  Nothing  like  it  in  kind,  nothing  approaching  it 
in  artistic  power,  had  been  vyritten  before  in  German  or 
in  any  other  language.  Yet  it  was  not  altogether  new; 
for  it  had  its  literary  antecedents  in  the  sense  that  the 
literary  values  it  exploited  had  been  exploited  before. 

281 


282  GOETHE 

The  feeling  for  them  was  latent  in  the  temper  of  the 
time,  else  the  novel  could  not  have  achieved  its  immense 
popularity.  What  Goethe  did  was  to  gather  the  scattered 
lights  together  and  focus  them  on  the  case  of  a  single 
imaginary  sufferer. 

Let  us  glance  at  the  literary  conjuncture  of  the  time 
in  its  relation  to  prose  fiction. 


In  Germany  there  was  simply  no  tradition  at  all — 
nothing  that  could  afford  help  or  guidance.  Wieland  had 
lately  emerged  into  view  as  a  story-teller,  but  apart  from 
his  writings  no  German  fiction  of  even  tolerable  merit 
had  come  into  being  for  a  hundred  years.  Back  in  the 
seventeenth  century  exotic  romance  of  the  stilted  and 
pedantic  order  had  flourished  for  a  while  in  the  hands 
of  the  Silesians  and  had  even  held  its  own  in  a  feeble 
way  after  Grimmelshausen  had  blazed  a  new  trail  in 
*  Simplicissimus,'  the  first  German  novel  that  is  based  on 
experience  and  observation.  But  Grimmelshausen  had 
no  successors  and  the  older  romance  gradually  lost  what 
little  favor  it  had  once  enjoyed.  Thus  the  vigorous 
German  appetite  for  fiction  became  more  and  more  de- 
pendent on  translations  and  imitations. 

In  the  second  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  '  Rob- 
inson Crusoe '  begat  a  numerous  German  progeny — the 
so-called  Robinsonades,  which  exploited  the  remote  and 
the  strange.  These  tales  of  lonely  adventure  in  far- 
away lands  had  this  in  common  with  the  earlier  stilted 
romance  that  they  were  both  purely  imaginative.  The 
authors  knew  nothing  except  from  books  of  what  they 
undertook  to  tell  about. 


THE  NOVELIST  283 

Then  came  the  turn  of  Richardson  and  the  lacrimose 
family  novel.  '  Pamela '  and  especially  '  Clarissa  '  and 
*  Grandison '  were  widely  read  in  Germany  and  bore  their 
part  in  ushering  in  the  sentimental  age.  Here  for  the 
first  time  was  a  genuine  bourgeois  fiction  that  seemed 
to  deal  with  the  now  and  here.  As  literature  for  the 
guidance  of  young  women  in  the  ways  of  virtuous  pro- 
priety it  was  both  edifying  and  interesting — especially 
to  women,  who  were  now  becoming  an  important  part 
of  the  reading  public.  Richardson's  heroines  furnished 
models  of  character  and  conduct.  A  young  lady  asked 
herself  how  Pamela  or  Clarissa  or  Henrietta  would  have 
behaved  under  the  circumstances.  An  early  poem  of 
Goethe  describes  the  charm  of  maidenhood  as  '  more  than 
Byron,  more  than  Pamela.'  Richardson's  moralizing 
bent  captured  a  multitude  of  readers  in  social  strata  that 
had  previously  cared  little  for  fiction  or  had  regarded  it 
as  dangerous. 

The  salient  feature  of  the  new  literature  was  that  it 
focused  attention  on  a  heroine — a  young  woman  exposed 
to  the  wiles  of  the  seducer.  The  situation  was  seen  for 
the  first  time  from  her  point  of  view.  Her  triumph  was 
the  preservation  of  her  virtue  amid  the  pitfalls  of  a 
wicked  world.  The  epistolary  form  lent  itself  admirably 
to  the  analysis  and  exposition  of  her  mental  states.  The 
man  in  the  case  was  usually  of  little  account,  whereas 
in  the  earlier  romances  he  had  been  everything. 

A  different  turn  was  taken  by  Wieland,  whose  inspira- 
tion came  from  France  and  Spain.  His  first  essay  in 
prose  fiction,  *  Don  Sylvio '  (1764),  was  a  take-off  on 
the  romance  of  chivalry,  its  hero  being,  like  him  of  La 
Mancha,  a  man  obsessed  by  an  illusion  and  moving  about 


284  GOETHE 

in  a  world  unrealized.  The  tale  has  something  of  the 
mellow  irony — that  spirit  of  persiflage  at  the  expense  of 
enthusiasm — which  was  to  be  Wieland's  specialty  in  the 
years  to  come.  But  it  lacks  reality.  The  belief  in  fairies 
was  a  manufactured  issue  which  it  was  now  hard  to  take 
seriously.  What  had  honest  and  aspiring  folk  to  do  with 
a  far-away  Spanish  prince  and  his  fantastic  lunacy?  A 
similar  impression  of  remoteness  must  have  been  pro- 
duced by  Wieland's  later  tales,  '  Agathon '  and  the 
'  Golden  Mirror '  and  the  *  Abderites,'  set  as  they  were 
in  Ancient  Greece  or  in  the  Orient.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
Wieland  was  talking  to  his  contemporaries  and  trying  to 
inculcate  a  sane  and  temperate  view  of  life.  But  his 
works  were  a  species  of  cipher  that  had  to  be  translated 
into  modern  terms,  and  they  were  not  altogether  free 
from  the  besetting  German  sin  of  pedantry.  If  it  was 
Wieland  who  weaned  the  South  Germans  from  an  ex- 
clusively French  literary  diet  we  can  at  any  rate  under- 
stand why  the  pabulum  he  offered  them  did  not  long 
prove  appetizing. 

In  none  of  these  currents  of  fiction  was  there  any 
serious  quarrel  with  the  social  order  as  such.  It  was 
regarded  as  a  part  of  the  nature  of  things,  and  the  nature 
of  things  was  unassailable.  The  popular  philosophy 
taught  that  this  w^orld  is  the  best  of  possible  worlds,  all 
things  having  been  wisely  preordained  for  man's  com- 
fort and  convenience.  If  any  particular  man  did  not 
find  them  comfortable  and  convenient  it  was  his  fault. 
That  the  social  order  was  not  a  part  of  the  nature  of 
things  at  all,  but  a  miserable  perversion  of  it — this  idea 
came  in  with  Rousseau,  tho  premonitory  mutterings  of 
it  can  be  heard  before  his  time.    The  '  New  Eloise  '  came 


THE  NOVELIST  285 

out  in  1760,  when  its  author  was  already  a  famous  man. 
It  was  widely  read  in  Germany  and  set  men  thinking 
everywhere. 

II 

Such  was  the  literary  firmament  in  which  the  *  Suffer- 
ings of  Young  Werther '  suddenly  blazed  out  in  the 
year  1774.  Since  that  time  several  generations  of  book- 
men have  busied  themselves  with  the  melancholy  tale, 
studying  it  and  commenting  on  it  from  every  conceiv- 
able point  of  view.  There  is  a  literature  dealing  with 
the  originals  of  the  characters  and  the  actual  happenings 
which  suggested  the  story;  another  devoted  to  the 
Werther  craze  and  the  swift  popularization  of  the  tale 
in  Germany  and  other  lands;  and  still  another  relating 
to  its  style  and  technic  and  the  various  influences  and 
*  motives '  that  went  to  the  making  of  it.  To  go  again 
into  these  trite  matters  here  would  be  wearisome.  What 
stands  out  conspicuous  in  the  retrospect  is  the  fact  that 
a  tale  of  despair  and  suicide,  a  study  reflecting,  not  its 
author's  philosophy  but  his  transient  moods  of  youthful 
hypochondria,  a  tale  with  whose  imputed  tendency 
almost  every  reader  found  fault,  and  of  which  its  author 
soon  became  half-ashamed — that  such  a  tale  so  quickly 
bit  itself  into  the  imagination  of  Europe  and  in  becom- 
ing a  by-word  became  a  classic.  If  one  asks  how  this 
could  come  about  the  answer  must  be  found  somehow  in 
the  art  with  which  the  story  is  told. 

This  art,  be  it  observed,  was  largely  unconscious — a 
case  of  hinwuhlen  comparable  to  the  automatic  writing 
of  persons  in  a  trance.  As  a  rational  being  Goethe 
hardly  knew  what  he  was  doing  when  he  wrote  the 


286  GOETHE 

story.  There  are  no  calculated  effects  such  as  one  can 
easily  detect  in  his  later  fiction.  The  letters  seem  to 
well  up  spontaneously,  like  all  good  letters,  and  to  be 
their  author's  private  affair.  They  produce  a  real  illu- 
sion of  biography.  There  is  no  speculation  on  the  public 
taste,  no  imitation,  so  far  as  the  general  make-up  of  the 
story  is  concerned,  of  anything  that  had  gone  before. 
Many  a  hint  is  indeed  taken  from  predecessors,  notably 
from  Richardson  and  Rousseau,  but  on  the  whole  these 
writers  serve  rather  as  beacon-lights  to  warn  away  than 
as  models  to  follow. 

The  first  notable  distinction  of  *  Werther '  is  the  im- 
passioned fervor  of  the  style.  The  book  is  aglow  from 
beginning  to  end — something  that  can  be  said  of  no 
previous  German  fiction.  Passion  had  hitherto  spoken 
the  affected  language  of  gallantry  or  else  the  restrained 
language  of  conventional  wooing.  Giinther  had  indeed 
sung  of  love  as  if  it  were  madness,  but  no  prose  writer 
had  shown  a  man  losing  his  head  over  the  sexual  attrac- 
tion. As  for  Richardson,  it  was  not  his  affair  to  set 
forth  the  delirium  of  love  or  any  other  delirium,  while 
his  imitators  from  Gellert  on  were  sober  moralists  for 
whom  anything  of  that  kind  would  have  been  quite  out 
of  the  question.  Nor  was  the  dialect  of  passion  in  the 
power  of  Wieland,  or  Sophie  La  Roche,  or  any  other 
German  novelist  in  the  third  quarter  of  the  eighteenth 
century. 

It  was  in  the  power  of  Rousseau,  however,  and  from 
him  the  infection  spread;  from  him  t 

who  threw 
Enchantment  over  passion  and  from  woe 
Wrung  overwhelming  eloquence. 


THE  NOVELIST  287 

It  was  Rousseau  who  first  imparted  a  hectic  flush  to  the 
romance  of  love  and  made  people  feel  that  the  lover's 
delire  and  ivresse,  being  natural,  must  also  be  divine. 
Goethe  knew  his  Rousseau,  but  had  no  need  of  Rousseau 
to  teach  him  the  artistic  value  of  emotional  vehemence. 
That  feeling  is  all  in  all  and  art  its  expression  was  the 
main  article  of  his  youthful  creed. 

So  we  find  Werther  always  in  a  quiver  of  excitement. 
Even  before  he  gets  his  first  glimpse  of  the  angelic  Lotte 
cutting  bread  and  butter  his  sensitive  soul  hardly  knows 
a  moment's  calm.  A  bit  of  woods,  a  chain  of  hills,  the 
nestling  valleys,  arouse  in  him  a  rapturous  desire  to  go 
and  mingle  his  being  with  theirs  and  give  himself  up  to 
the  *  bliss  of  one  single,  great,  glorious  emotion.'  And 
then — *  when  we  hasten  thither  and  there  becomes  here, 
alas,  everything  is  as  it  was:  we  stand  in  our  poverty, 
our  limitation,  and  our  soul  pines  for  the  refreshment 
that  has  escaped  us.'  Not  only  does  he  long  for  great 
emotions  that  evade  him,  but  the  unexcited  state  of 
others  fills  him  with  disgust.  He  feels  that  he  cuts  a 
silly  figure  in  society  when  anyone  asks  him  how  he  likes 
Lotte.  '  Likes !  How  I  hate  the  word !  What  kind  of 
a  fellow  must  he  be  who  likes  Lotte?  whose  senses  and 
feelings  are  not  completely  filled  with  her?  Likes! 
Lately  someone  asked  me  how  I  liked  Ossian.' 

It  is  this  intense  preoccupation  with  his  own  feelings, 
this  violent  oscillation  of  the  emotional  balance-tongue, 
that  constitutes  Werther's  character.  His  character  and 
at  the  same  time  his  tragic  weakness,  for  the  emotional 
pressure  never  discharges  itself  in  useful  action.  The 
reader  soon  comes  to  see  that  such  a  nature  must  inevi- 
tably succumb  to  the  power  of  the  commonplace.    He  is 


i 

288  GOETHE 

riding  for  a  fall.  .Nothing  can  save  him  but  work,  and 
he  can  not  work  because  of  his  overpowering  emotions,'^ 
That  is  to  say,  the  tragic  ending  lay  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  theme,  which  was  precisely  the  '  sufferings '  of  a 
youth  thus  constituted. 

Another  point  in  which  *  Werther  '  differs  from  every- 
thing that  had  gone  before  is  the  rapid  movement  of  the 
story.  Once  fully  obsessed  by  his  doleful  vision  Goethe 
wrote  it  out  with  an  eye  single  to  the  main  issue.  The 
Richardsonian  novel  is  nothing  if  not  discursive,  its 
object  being  to  set  the  reader  a-thinking  about  moral  ques- 
tions and  so  to  improve  his  character.  So  too  the  '  New 
Eloise,'  particularly  the  latter  half,  teems  with  long  dis- 
quisitions about  this  and  that.  At  times  one  completely 
forgets  St.  Preux  and  Julie ;  one  seems  to  have  passed  out 
of  the  sphere  of  art  and  to  be  listening  to  an  academic  lec- 
ture on  gardening,  or  suicide,  or  the  simple  life,  or  what- 
ever the  subject  may  be.  In  time  one  comes  to  feel  that 
Rousseau's  real  concern  is  to  express  his  opinions  about 
various  matters  rather  than  to  tell  a  story. 

Of  course  this  discursiveness  was  not  Rousseau's 
invention.  It  had  been  a  salient  feature  of  prose  fiction 
for  centuries.  Even  in  the  days  of  medieval  romance 
the  author  had  shown  his  talent  by  embroidering  a  web 
of  episodes  around  his  main  theme  and  incidentally  deliv- 
ering himself  of  his  own  up-to-date  views.  The  character 
of  the  comment,  like  that  of  the  episodes,  had  changed 
from  age  to  age,  but  never  ceased  to  be  a  part  of  the 
program.  The  views  set  forth  might  be  those  of  a 
scholastic  pedant,  a  gentle  cynic,  a  solemn  moralist. 
Sterne  introduced  the  new  pose  of  the  sentimental 
humorist,  for  whom  the  story  was  nothing  at  all,  the 


THE  NOVELIST  289 

episodes  mere  random  happenings,  and  the  sentimental 
comment  the  real  heart  of  the  matter. 

The  author  of  '  Werther '  turned  his  back  on  all  this 
traditional  craftsmanship  of  the  story-teller,  keeping  his 
^\Own  personality  quite  in  the  background.  A  very  short 
preface  introduces  him  as  the  editor  of  certain  letters 
that  have  come  into  his  possession,  and  an  occasional 
footnote  keeps  alive  this  fiction.  Toward  the  end  there 
is  a  bit  of  narrative  in  the  third  person.  Otherwise  the 
reader's  attention  is  kept  riveted  to  the  story  of  Werther. 
There  are  no  irrelevancies  such  as  a  sophisticated  reader 
would  have  been  inclined  to  pass  over.  Indeed  there  is 
a  steady  assumption  that  the  reader  is  not  sophisticated 
at  all, — not  a  person  engaged  in  perusing  a  cunningly 
contrived  fiction  and  concerned  to  understand  the  author's 
cunning— but  a  naive  tender  soul  reading  the  real  letters 
of  an  erring  brother,  and  capable  of  sympathy  with  suf- 
fering however  much  he  might  privately  disapprove  the 
sufferer's  conduct.  Trivial  episodes  that  seem  at  first 
irrelevant  afterwards  turn  out  to  have  their  bearing  on 
the  story.  The  opinions  expressed  are  those  of  Werther, 
and  the  very  vehemence  with  which  they  are  set  down 
hightens  the  impression  of  his  general  maladaptation  to 
his  surroundings. 

But  all  these  qualities  that  we  have  been  considering 
— the  fervor  of  the  style,  the  hectic  poetry  of  passion, 
the  swift  movement  of  the  story,  and  its  freedom  from 
all  retarding  elements — would  never  have  made  '  Wer- 
ther '  a  classic  had  it  not  come  from  the  deep  heart  of  its 
epoch.  I  do  not  refer  to  its  tragic  ending,  which  was 
a  matter  of  artistic  compulsion.  The  real  thought  of 
Goethe  on  that  subject  is  contained  in  his  oft-quoted 


290  GOETHE 


words,  '  Be  a  man  and  do  not  follow  his  example/  It 
came  from  the  heart  of  its  epoch  in  the* sense  that  it^ 
eloquently  expressed  what  thousands  felt  in  the  form 
of  a  dumb  discontent  with  existing  arrangements  and 
a  vague  aspiration  for  better  things  not  yet  clearly 
glimpsed.  Fundamentally  Werther's  feelings  are  nearly 
always  wholesome;  the  morbidity  comes  only  from  his 
dwelling  on  them  too  intently;  in  other  words,  from 
his  failure  to  see  life  whole.  Take  for  example  his 
nature-worship.  :The  feeling  for  nature  as  a  mystic 
source  of  consolation,  an  unfailing  refuge  from  the  bad- 
ness of  society, — this  feeling  which  had  long  been  gath- 
ering momentum  in  literature — finds  culminant  expres- 
sion in  '  Werther.'  But  this  is  only  one  phase  of  '  all 
the  wonderful  feeHng*  with  which  Werther's  heart 
*  embraces  nature.'  Most  often  it  is  her  immanent  divin- 
ity— the  pantheistic  reaction — that  excites  his  transports, 
as  when  he  would  fain  fly  away  with  the  wings  of  a 
crane  *  to  the  shore  of  the  boundless  sea,  there  for  just 
one  moment,  in  the  limited  power  of  his  breast,  to  drink 
one  drop  of  the  blessedness  of  the  Being  that  in  himself 
and  by  himself  brings  forth  all  things.' 

Perhaps  this  is  a  rather  crude  expression  of  that  ex- 
pansive cosmic  emotion  which  the  modern  man  has 
learned  to  know  in  presence  of  the  All.  It  has  been 
better  phrased  by  many  a  modern  poet  and  by  Goethe 
himself  in  verse.  But  in  prose  it  was  first  essayed  in 
'  Werther,'  which  for  multitudes  took  on  the  character 
of  a  revelation.  And  then  Werther's  predilection  for 
the  simple  life  and  the  plain  people,  his  fondness  for 
children,  his  hatred  of  pretense  and  snobbery — no 
wonder  so  many  saw  in  the  book  the  gospel  of  a  better 


THE  NOVELIST  291 

dispensation.  If  it  opened  the  sluice-gates  of  a  maudlin 
sentimentalism  it  also  disclosed  pure  springs  of  whole- 
some feeling.  It  was  like  the  discovery  of  a  new  con- 
tinent for  the  human  soul.  This  is  much  to  be  said  of 
any  book. 

Ill 

After  the  appearance  of  '  Werther '  more  than  two 
decades  elapsed  before  Goethe  published  anything  more 
in  the  line  of  prose  fiction.  During  the  greater  part  of 
this  interval,  however,  he  worked  in  a  desultory  way  at 
the  story  of  Wilhelm  Meister,  which  is  as  leisurely  and 
diffuse  as  '  Werther '  is  rapid  and  centripetal.  In  both 
drama  and  fiction  he  had  achieved  a  brilliant  youthful 
success  by  a  bold  departure  from  the  accepted  conven- 
tions of  the  art,  giving  to  the  world  a  diffuse  play  and 
a  concentrated  novel.  And  then,  with  waning  radicalism 
and  increasing  respect  for  traditional  forms,  came  a 
number  of  concentrated  plays  and  a  highly  diffuse  novel. 
This  does  not  mean  that  *  Wilhelm  Meister  '  is  like  any 
novel  that  had  gone  before,  any  more  than  that  '  Iphi- 
genie '  is  like  any  play  that  had  gone  before.  But  in 
point  of  architecture  *  Wilhelm  Meister '  is  more  like, 
say,  *  Tom  Jones '  or  Wieland's  '  Agathon '  than  it  is 
like  *  Werther ';  just  as  '  Iphigenie  '  is  more  like  a  play 
of  Corneille  than  it  is  hke  '  Gotz  von  Berlichingen.' 

It  is  probable  that  '  Wilhelm  Meister '  was  at  first 
conceived  as  a  sort  of  antidote  to  '  Werther,'  which 
many  were  prone  to  regard  as  a  pernicious  defense  of 
suicide.  What  would  have  happened  if  Werther  had 
had  something  to  do?  What  if,  for  example,  instead  of 
mooning  and  nursing  his  sick  heart  he  had  attended  to 


292  GOETHE 

his  sketching  and  in  time  become  a  painter  of  distinc- 
tion? The  germ-idea  of  the  new  tale  was,  accordingly, 
the  saving  power  of  an  art  felt  as  a  '  mission  '  that  would 
make  life  worth  living.  That  Goethe  should  have  hit 
on  the  histrionic  art  to  be  his  new  hero's  medicine  seems 
a  little  strange  at  first,  for  play-acting  had  never  been 
more  than  a  momentary  concern  of  his  up  to  the  time 
of  his  settling  in  Weimar.  Poetry  and  painting  were 
more  in  his  line.  On  the  other  hand,  the  theatrical  busi- 
ness had  certain  marked  advantages.  In  the  first  place, 
it  provided  in  a  natural  way  for  the  wandering  hero, 
who  had  long  been  a  prime  ingredient  of  romance. 
Secondly,  there  was  just  then  a  keen  public  interest  in 
the  theater  and  all  that  pertained  to  it.  Finally,  the 
business  of  an  actor-manager  touches  life  at  more  points 
than  does  any  of  the  sedentary  arts. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  prose  fiction  had  not  yet 
made  friends,  to  any  notable  extent,  with  the  stationary 
hero  having  a  definite  calling.     Its  aristocratic  scheme 
had  no  place  for  a  hero  who  needed  to  earn  his  living 
or  was  gravely  conceined  about  the  doing  of  useful  work 
as  a  social  unit.     Its  main  tissue  was  a  succession  of 
wonderful  and  strangely  complicated  adventures  in  dis- 
tant parts;  its  hero  a  man  bent  on  winning  his  lady-love 
and  marrying  her  after  all  the  obstacles  had  been  over- 
come.    But  the  principal  thing  was  the  adventures,  which 
might  include  dallyings  with  other  women  than  the  pre- 
destined wife.     The  scheme  provided  for  any  number 
of  episodes  and  any  amount  of  incidental  comment  by 
the  author. 

Now   'Wilhelm   Meister '   was  to  be  a   compromise 
between   the   technic   of   the   older   romance   and  that 


THE  NOVELIST  293 

realism  which  was  a  fundamental  demand  of  Goethe's 
nature.  Instead  of  the  epistolary  form  which  had 
served  him  so  well  in  '  Werther  '  he  chose  that  of  nar- 
rative, which  lent  itself  more  readily  to  discursive  com- 
ment. He  made  his  Wilhelm  a  wanderer  in  the  Ger- 
many of  his  own  day  but  gave  no  definite  indications  of 
place.  He  undertook  to  depict  German  types  of  char- 
acter but  gave  them  un-German  names.  The  atmos- 
phere was  to  be,  in  general,  realistic  but  the  adventures 
and  the  improbable  concatenation  of  events  would  savor 
of  the  older  romance. 

When  he  began  to  write  he  started  in  with  simple 
autobiography  under  a  very  thin  veil  of  fiction.  The 
'  Theatrical  Mission '  opens  thus :  '  It  was  a  few  days 
before  Christmas  eve,  174-,  that  Benedict  Meister,  cit- 
izen and  merchant  of  M.,  a  midland  imperial  city,  was 
walking  home  from  his  customary  social  gathering  at 
about  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening.'  Then  we  are  told  how 
Benedict  drops  in  on  his  mother  and  finds  her  furbishing 
up  a  collection  of  puppets  for  the  delectation  of  her 
grandchildren  at  Christmas.  Next  we  get  a  very  cir- 
cumstantial account  of  the  Christmas  puppet-play,  of  the 
deep  impression  produced  by  it  on  the  boy  Wilhelm,  of 
his  increasing  fondness  for  play-acting,  and  of  his 
infatuation  (when  he  grows  up)  for  the  actress  Mariane. 
It  is  all  told  in  matter-of-fact  narrative,  in  chronological 
order,  with  but  little  conversation. 

In  the  revised  version,  the  *  Apprenticeship,'  the  story 
begins  thus :  '  The  play  lasted  very  long.  Old  Bar- 
bara stepped  often  to  the  window  to  listen  for  the  coach 
wheels.'  Presently  Mariane  arrives  and  we  learn  from 
her  talk  with  Barbara  of  her  two  lovers  before  Wilhelm 


294  GOETHE 

appears.  The  next  morning  he  is  chided  by  his  mother 
for  wasting  so  much  time  over  the  theater,  whereupon 
he  becomes  reminiscent  and  recalls  his  childish  play  with 
the  puppets.  Then  he  goes  and  exhumes  the  old  play- 
things, takes  them  for  Mariane  to  see,  and  regales  her 
at  great  length  with  further  reminiscences.  Meanwhile 
she  falls  asleep. 

One  can  see  that  the  reviser  was  trying  to  enliven  his 
narrative  by  plunging  into  the  midst  of  things,  accord- 
ing to  the  Horatian  maxim.  The  same  purpose  is  evi- 
dent all  along  in  the  frequent  substitution  of  talk  for 
narrative  in  the  third  person.  But  the  talk  is  not  gen- 
uine even  in  the  revision ;  the  characters  do  not  converse, 
but  discourse,  often  rather  prosily.  Wilhelm  delivers 
his  puppet-play  recollections  at  length  to  his  mother, 
who  of  course  remembers  it  all  as  well  as  he. 

Then  he  goes  over  the  same  subject  with  Mariane, 
who  falls  asleep  in  his  arms.  Naturally  enough  the 
reader  is  bored  too.  Very  often  Wilhelm  seems  to  be 
lecturing,  with  little  regard  for  his  hearer's  responsive- 
ness. And  how  very  wise  he  is!  He  seems  to  have 
reflected  profoundly  on  every  subject  and  to  have  his 
conclusions  ready  on  tap.  Such  a  clever  youth,  one 
feels,  ought  hardly  to  be  an  apprentice  at  all. 

It  is  plain  that  when  he  began  the  tale  Goethe  was  not 
obsessed,  as  he  had  been  in  the  case  of  '  Werther,*  by  a 
vision  that  had  to  be  recorded  at  white  heat.  On  the 
contrary,  he  was  now  in  a  calm  reminiscent  mood.  He 
felt  the  need  of  a  framework  for  his  reflections  and 
recollections,  and  he  saw  that  the  biography  of  a  wan- 
dering poet-actor  would  provide  it.  Its  interest  would 
lie  in  a  saunter  along  the  highways  and  byways  of  life, 


THE  NOVELIST  295 

in  the  wayside  experiences  and  observations,  rather  than 
in  any  particular  goal  to  be  reached.  Of  course  there 
was  to  be  a  goal.  Our  romancer  did  not  dream,  when 
he  began,  that  his  enterprise  would  go  on  spinning  itself 
out  year  after  year  and  never  come  to  an  end.  There 
must  have  floated  before  his  mind  some  point  at  which 
he  was  going  to  cut  the  thread  and  call  the  skein  com- 
plete. And  the  goal  can  hardly  have  been  the  ordinary 
one  of  romance,  a  promising  marriage.  There  was 
little  in  Goethe's  temperament  or  experience  to  make  him 
think  of  the  mating  process  as  a  grand  climax  in  any 
man's  life. 

Most  probably  the  goal  was  to  have  been  that  which 
is  hinted  at  in  the  first  book  of  the  '  Theatrical  Mission ' 
as  follows:  'His  calling  was  now  clear  to  him;  the 
object  of  his  efforts  seemed  nearer  to  him  in  his  endeavor 
to  win  Mariane's  hand.  In  happy  moments  he  could 
not  fail  to  glimpse  in  himself  the  perfect  actor  of  the 
future,  the  creator  of  a  great  national  theater  for  which 
he  had  heard  so  many  sighing.'  At  the  end  of  the  *  The- 
atrical Mission  '  this  goal  is  virtually  attained.  Wilhelm 
has  risen  to  be  stage-manager  of  a  good  theater,  he  has 
acted  Hamlet  with  success,  prosperity  is  coming  his  way. 
As  a  mere  antidote  to  '  Werther '  the  story  might  have 
ended  there. 

But  by  the  time  he  reached  that  point  in  the  story 
Goethe  was  beginning  to  lose  interest  in  the  '  mission ' 
idea.  His  own  mission  in  life  was  not  yet  clear  to  him 
and  his  activities  at  Weimar  had  brought  him  any- 
thing but  unalloyed  satisfaction.  Moreover,  it  probably 
seemed  to  him  that  to  let  his  aspiring  hero  end  in  the 
prime  of  his  youth  as  a  prosperous  and  contented  the- 


296  GOETHE 

atrical  man  would  be  tame  to  the  point  of  banality.  So 
he  decided  to  change  the  name  of  the  tale  and  to  steer 
for  a  different  port.  Wilhelm  is  made  to  fall  out  of 
humor  with  the  theater  and  become  convinced  that  he 
never  had  any  talent  for  it.  For  a  while  he  drifts  and 
cultivates  his  ego.  But  when  he  is  in  danger  of  becom- 
ing an  aimless  hedonist  he  is  taken  in  hand  by  a  society 
of  wise  men  who  have  been  watching  him  and  is  made 
to  see  that  he  must  have  something  to  do.  Culture  will 
come  only  with  work.  Farming  appeals  to  him.  He 
buys  an  estate,  wins  the  hand  of  an  ideal  wife,  and  we 
expect  to  see  him  anchored  as  a  first-class  husbandman. 
But  before  he  is  married  to  the  adorable  Natalie  he  has 
to  go  to  Italy  to  settle  an  estate.  He  sets  out  with  his 
son  Felix — and  right  there  the  *  Apprenticeship  *  comes 
to  an  end. 

The  type  of  fiction  represented  by  '  Wilhelm  Meister ' 
is  no  longer  held  in  esteem;  indeed  the  book  never  was 
popular  except  among  the  literary  class.  Today  we 
object  to  its  discursiveness,  its  slow  movement,  its 
obtrusive  didacticism;  above  all  to  its  passive,  uninter- 
esting hero  who  never  comes  to  the  point  of  doing  any- 
thing to  justify  the  pains  bestowed  on  his  education. 
Even  before  the  end  of  the  *  Apprenticeship  *  one  begins 
to  suspect  that  he  will  never  amount  to  anything  not- 
withstanding his  amiable  traits  and  his  eagerness  to 
learn;  this  suspicion  then  becomes  a  certainty  in  the 
'  Wanderings,'  where  all  illusion  of  reality  vanishes  and 
the  scheme  becomes  a  mere  receptacle  for  literary  odds 
and  ends.  Indeed  the  three  volumes  of  the  *  Wander- 
ings '  should  not  be  thought  of  as  fictional  art  at  all,  being 
quite  incapable  of  giving  the  kind  of  pleasure  that  good 


THE  NOVELIST  297 

art  affords.  But  they  have  their  value  as  a  repository  of 
the  aging  Goethe's  reflections  on  rehgion,  science,  art, 
culture,  industry,  social  ethics,  and  other  matters  that 
loom  large  on  the  horizon  of  the  modern  man.  The 
ideas  are  precious,  but  we  do  not  like  to  receive  our 
philosophy  as  the  by-product  of  a  fiction  which  in  itself  is 
tedious  and  unreal. 

IV 

Artistically  the  '  Elective  Affinities,'  albeit  here  too  the 
discursive  method  of  the  later  Goethe  is  much  in  evi- 
dence, is  more  akin  to  '  Werther '  than  to  '  Wilhelm 
Meister.'  Like  '  Werther  '  it  is  a  tale  of  morbid  despair 
ending  in  a  voluntary  death.  Like  '  Werther '  it  is  har- 
monious in  tone  and  tinged,  toward  the  end,  with  the 
somber  hue  of  tragic  fatality.  Finally,  the  story  is 
climactic;  it  comes  to  an  end,  and  the  end,  while  it 
affronts  the  reason,  just  as  in  the  case  of  '  Werther,'  is 
felt  to  be  inevitable.  The  mountain  stream  widens  out 
as  it  reaches  the  plain,  flows  along  pleasantly  for  a  while, 
and  then  gathers  itself  together  for  the  inevitable  plunge 
over  the  precipice. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  style  and  method  of  the  *  Elec- 
tive Affinities  '  are  more  like  those  of  '  Wilhelm  Meister.' 
Here  again  the  same  unimpassioned  diction — always 
warm  but  never  hot — and  the  same  sauntering  pace  with 
frequent  halts  and  deviations.  And  not  only  is  the 
reader  often  halted,  but  he  must  listen  to  much  discourse 
and  join  in  the  contemplation  of  many  a  wayside  phe- 
nomenon when  he  would  much  rather  be  on  his  way. 
Withal  there  is  the  author's  serene  air  of  detachment: 
others  may  sit  in  judgment,  he  is  describing  a  case. 


298  GOETHE 

If  we  look  at  the  matter  from  a  technical  point  of 
view  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  discursive  method 
is  more  disturbing  in  the  *  Elective  Affinities  '  than  in 
*  Wilhelm  Meister.'  In  the  latter  it  is  warranted  to  a 
degree  by  the  very  scheme  of  the  book — a  peripatetic 
hero  seeking  to  gain  wisdom  by  social  contact.  In  fol- 
lowing his  fortunes  one  may  expect  to  move  rather 
slowly,  that  one  may  become  acquainted  with  the  people, 
the  scenes,  and  the  experiences  to  which  he  reacts. 
Nothing  that  intersects  his  orbit  can  be  safely  set  down 
as  irrelevant,  even  if  one  does  not  see  at  the  time  what  it 
is  for.  But  it  is  different  in  the  '  Elective  Affinities,' 
where  we  have  a  family  tragedy  wrought  by  the  invasion 
of  lawless  passion.  Essentially  it  is  the  story  of  a  girl's 
renunciation.  In  its  very  nature  the  theme  is  circum- 
scribed, like  that  of  '  Werther.'  Ottilie's  tragedy  grows 
out  of  her  character,  and  of  course  her  character,  like 
everyone  else's,  is  partly  molded  by  her  environment. 
But  environment  is  a  very  elastic  concept.  In  a  sense 
one's  environment  is  the  infinite  universe  as  shaped  by 
all  past  time.  This  being  so,  it  becomes  necessary  to 
select  such  details  as  are  evidently,  or  can  be  made  to 
appear,  pertinent  to  the  case  in  hand.  This  Goethe  does 
not  always  do  in  the  '  Elective  Affinities.'  There  is  a 
good  deal  in  the  story  which  has  no  discoverable  bearing 
on  the  tragedy. 

The  intrusion  of  this  alien  stuff  was  partly  due  to  the 
physical  exigencies  of  publication,  that  is,  of  volume- 
making, — a  matter  about  which  Goethe  became  less  and 
less  squeamish  with  advancing  years,  until  his  lax  con- 
science fairly  ran  riot  in  *  Wilhelm  Meister's  Wander- 
ings.'    Originally  he  had  planned  a  comparatively  short 


THE  NOVELIST  299 

story  of  renunciation,  to  be  published  as  one  of  a  collec- 
tion. But  the  manuscript  grew  under  his  hands  until 
it  was  too  long  for  the  purpose  in  view,  so  he  decided  to 
expand  it  into  a  fair-sized  novel.  Hence  a  mass  of 
embroidery  dealing  with  matters  which  happened  to 
interest  him  personally  at  the  time,  but  were  not  relevant 
to  his  tragic  tale  of  renunciation.  With  careful  scrutiny 
this  embroidery  can  be  detected  by  the  reader. 

Just  as  it  is  wrong  to  regard  *  Werther '  as  a  con- 
tribution to  the  ethics  of  suicide,  so  it  is  wrong  to  regard 
the  *  Elective  Affinities  '  as  a  contribution  to  the  ethics 
of  marriage;  wrong,  that  is,  so  far  as  one  may  try  to 
extract  a  doctrine  from  the  story.  It  neither  assails  nor 
defends  any  particular  view  of  the  sanctity  of  wedlock. 
The  characters  set  forth  their  views  and  act  in  accord- 
ance with  their  several  natures.  Sometimes  the  opinions 
set  forth  are  strict,  sometimes  latitudinarian,  but  the 
author  does  not  take  sides.  He  has  the  air  of  stating 
a  case,  not  of  trying  to  influence  opinion  or  practice. 
Here  as  elsewhere,  in  harmony  with  his  principle  that 
the  function  of  art  is  not  to  teach  directly  but  to  exhibit 
that  about  which  instruction  were  desirable,  his  attitude 
is  one  of  artistic  aloofness. 

And  yet,  in  a  certain  deeper  sense  he  does  take  sides : 
for  who  can  imagine  him  as  letting  the  story  end  in  such 
a  way  that  Edward  should  obtain  a  divorce  from  his 
wife  and  marry  Ottilie,  the  Captain  marry  Charlotte,  and 
all  four  live  happily  ever  afterward?  In  the  philistine 
world  of  prosaic  fact  such  an  ending  is  quite  thinkable; 
for  in  the  more  or  less  haphazard  mating  process  of 
men  and  women  it  is  only  to  be  expected  that  there 
should  be  occasional  misfits  that  might  be  corrected,  to 


300  GOETHE 

the  advantage  of  all  concerned,  by  remating.  For  some 
people  such  remating  might  be  plainly  '  indicated,'  as 
the  doctors  say.  It  is  not  of  necessity  unethical,  does 
not  of  necessity  turn  out  badly.  A  case  can  be  made 
out  for  it. 

Now  if  Goethe  had  really  wished  to  advocate  a  cause 
or  to  justify  the  affinity  doctrine,  if  he  had  been  a  special 
pleader  instead  of  an  artist,  he  would  have  given  his 
novel  that  very  turn  at  the  end.  Then  it  would  have 
been  clearly  a  *  novel  of  tendency  *  and  there  could  be  no 
mistake  about  it.  Everybody  would  have  taken  it,  and 
quite  justly,  as  a  plea  for  trial  marriage  and  easy  divorce. 
But  he  did  not  do  this.  Why  ?  Because  it  is  artistically 
impossible.  It  lies  in  the  nature  of  Ottilie  that  she  can 
not  live  on  either  alone  or  as  the  wife  of  Edward. 
Another  woman  might,  but  she  can  not.  For  her,  just 
as  for  Werther,  death  is  the  only  release  from  an  intol- 
erable situation.  Were  it  otherwise  she  would  not  be 
Ottilie. 


As  a  writer  of  short  stories  Goethe  can  hardly  be 
reckoned  among  the  great  virtuosos.  He  has  been  sur- 
passed by  many  a  man  of  far  less  renown.  What  he 
wrote  shows  in  respect  of  form  the  unmistakable 
Goethean  touch,  and  to  say  this  is  to  bestow  praise.  But 
his  stories  lack  human  interest.  They  are  made  of  lit- 
erary moonshine  without  any  red  blood. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  he  did  not  turn  his  hand 
to  the  short  story,  at  least  he  published  nothing,  until  he 
was  nearly  fifty  years  old,  with  a  great  reputation  made 
on  other  lines.    It  was  toward  the  end  of  the  year  1795 


THE  NOVELIST  301 

that  he  began  to  publish  his  '  Diversions  of  German 
Exiles  '  in  Schiller's  Horen,  and  we  have  evidence  enough 
that  the  enterprise  was  not  taken  very  seriously.  Five 
years  before  he  had  closed  his  account,  so  to  speak,  with 
his  poetic  past;  meanwhile  he  had  been  waiting  for  an 
inspiration  and  indulging  his  lighter  cynical  vein  rather 
freely.  It  was  the  time  of  the  '  Roman  Elegies,'  *  Rey- 
nard the  Fox,'  and  the  weak  satirical  plays  *  Grand 
Cophta '  and  '  Citizen  General.'  And  now  the  grave 
idealist  Schiller  had  come  into  his  life  with  an  urgent 
demand  for  fresh  artistic  production,  and  at  the  same 
time  it  was  a  question  of  popularizing  a  magazine  that 
was  in  danger  of  sinking  from  excess  of  heavy  matter. 
Withal  it  was  a  part  of  the  Horen  program  to  try  to 
divert  the  public  from  the  excitements  and  animosities 
born  of  the  Revolution  by  offering  them  something  better 
to  talk  about. 

Under  these  circumstances  Goethe  bethought  him  of 
the  old  scheme  of  Boccaccio's  *  Decameron  '  and  other 
similar  collections,  in  which  a  group  of  people  amuse 
themselves  by  telling  stories  in  order  to  keep  their  minds 
from  an  unpleasant  subject.  In  this  case  the  unpleasant 
subject  would  be  the  French  Revolution.  For  such  a 
purpose,  where  a  game  of  cards  would  do  as  well,  it  was 
not  necessary  that  the  stories  told  should  be  notable 
works  of  art.  And  they  are  not.  In  fact,  the  old 
clergyman  who  functions  as  chief  narrator  declares  in 
advance  that  what  he  has  to  offer  will  be  quite  worthless 
in  itself.  Of  the  seven  tales  in  the  collection  three  appear 
to  have  been  original  with  Goethe;  the  others  were 
revamped  from  his  reading.  The  latter  are  dubious 
tales  of  lawless  love,  one  of  which  fairly  rivals  Boccaccio 


302  GOETHE 

in  frank  Indecency.  It  would  have  been  quite  impossible 
in  the  refined  company  which  the  introductory  fiction 
describes.  At  the  end  of  the  collection  stands  the  won- 
derful Mdrchen,  engaging  the  fancy  and  baffling  the 
intellect — a  deliberate  mystification  quite  alien  to  the 
spirit  of  real  literary  art.  It  has  the  effect,  not  of  a  true 
■fairy-tale,  which  is  always  simple,  but  of  a  highly  intri- 
cate charade  to  which  no  answer  is  forthcoming. 

The  most  of  the  stories  told  in  the  *  Diversions '  have 
an  element  of  the  marvelous  which  is  left  unexplained. 
There  is  something  to  debate  and  wag  heads  over.  This 
quality  Goethe  seems  to  have  regarded  as  the  essential 
character  of  the  Novelle.  The  stories  incorporated  in 
*  Wilhelm  Meister's  Wanderings  '  generally  conform  to 
the  scheme.  But  it  were  hardly  worth  while  to  illustrate 
in  detail. 

In  his  old  age — it  was  in  the  winter  of  1826-7 — he 
wrote  a  story  for  which  at  first  he  and  Eckermann  could 
find  no  satisfactory  name.  Finally  he  said :  *  Why  not 
call  it  simply  Novelle,  for  what  is  the  Novelle  but  a  won- 
derful event  that  has  happened?'  The  story  appears 
under  that  title  in  his  works.  We  read  of  an  amiable 
lady  who  goes  riding  one  day  in  the  highlands  near  her 
husband's  estate  and  is  badly  frightened  by  a  tame  tiger 
that  has  escaped  from  a  menagery  in  a  neighboring  town. 
The  princess  flees  in  alarm  on  her  horse,  which  falls 
exhausted  just  as  the  tiger  is  killed  by  a  lucky  pistol-shot 
of  her  trusty  escort  Honorio.  As  they  are  talking  about 
the  dead  beast  its  keeper  appears  with  his  wife  and  their 
little  son,  who  sings  and  plays  the  flute  wonderfully.  In 
a  torrent  of  grief  the  woman  explains  that  the  tiger  was 
quite  harmless,  its  savage  nature  having  been  completely 


THE  NOVELIST  303 

subdued  by  the  child's  music.  They  offer  to  prove  this 
upon  the  Hon,  which  has  also  escaped  and  is  not  far 
away.  Soon  they  locate  the  lion  in  a  grotto  and  agree 
to  try  the  effect  of  the  boy's  music.  Amid  the  trepida- 
tions of  the  company  the  child  advances  boldly  into  the 
grotto,  singing  a  song  of  a  prophet  in  his  cave  who  is 
guarded  by  angels  and  charms  a  lion  and  a  lioness  by 
means  of  his  pious  chants.  Soon  the  singing  child 
emerges  from  the  grotto  with  the  gentle  lion,  *  looking  in 
his  transfiguration  like  a  mighty  conqueror,'  while  the 
beast  follows  as  a  creature  *  not  bereft  of  its  strength 
but  tamed  by  subjection  to  its  own  peaceful  will.' 

The  '  wonder '  in  this  case  is,  presumably,  whether  the 
pious  import  of  the  child's  song  had  anything  to  do  with 
its  effect  on  the  lion.  That  question  opens  a  vista  of 
possible  debate.  The  story  leaves  the  intellect  toying 
with  an  unsolved  problem. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  CRITIC 

In  considering  Goethe  as  a  critic  of  letters  and  the 
plastic  arts — such  is  to  be  the  limitation  of  this  study — 
we  shall  have  to  derive  our  total  impression  mainly  from 
scattered  utterances  in  his  minor  writings.  During  the 
first  forty-five  years  of  his  life  he  wrote  but  little  criti- 
cism aside  from  the  anonymous  reviews  in  the  Frankfort 
Gelehrte  Anzeigen  in  the  year  1772.  Almost  contem- 
porary with  these  we  have  a  critical  rhapsody  on  Shak- 
spere  and  another  on  the  Strassburg  cathedral.  In  1776 
he  published  a  paper  of  half-a-dozen  pages  entitled 
*^  After  Falconet  and  Beyond  Falconet/  in  which  he 
commended  the  school  of  nature  to  painter  and  sculptor. 
His  letters  occasionally  contain  critical  observations. 
There  is  criticism  implied  in  '  Gods,  Heroes,  and  Wie- 
land,*  which  is  a  gibe  at  Wieland  for  his  bedevilment  of 
the  Greek  gods  and  heroes.  There  is  some  criticism  in 
'  Werther '  and  '  Tasso,'  a  good  deal  in  '  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter.'  His  contributions  to  the  Horen,  beginning  in  1795, 
were  mostly  of  the  creative  order,  while  his  Propylden, 
devoted  to  art-criticism  and  largely  taken  up  with  mat- 
ters of  antiquarian  scholarship,  was  short-lived.  In  his 
later  years  we  have  in  the  reviews  and  comments  of 
Kunst  und  Alterthum  and  in  his  conversations  with 
Eckermann  a  fairly  complete  reflex  of  his  critical  way  of 
thinking. 

304 


THE  CRITIC  305 


The  critic,  like  everybody  else,  is  a  child  of  his  epoch. 
Today  we  think  of  criticism  as  an  art,  the  art  of  intelli- 
gent appraisal.  It  has  its  affinities  with  science  and  with 
artisanship,  and  it  is  always — more  or  less — self- 
portraiture.  But  what  makes  its  real  worth  is  evermore 
its  artistic  quality — the  how  much  more  than  the  what. 

Now  in  the  Germany  of  Goethe's  early  years  not  much 
had  been  heard  or  seen  of  criticism  as  an  art.  It  was 
rather  a  matter  of  argumentation  over  supposedly  funda- 
mental principles,  over  the  relative  merit  of  schools  and 
models,  over  questions  of  scholarship.  There  was  no 
clean-cut  distinction  between  the  scholar  and  the  man 
of  letters.  The  literary  magazines  were  for  the 
*  learned,'  and  criticism  was  largely  in  the  hands  of 
jejune  theorizers  who  laid  down  the  law  with  vigor  and 
rigor.  Even  Lessing,  the  greatest  critic  of  the  epoch, 
was  always  at  his  best  as  an  attorney  for  the  prosecu- 
tion. To  Goethe,  born  with  the  instinct  of  the  artist, 
these  brain-spun  theories  of  those  who  had  never  felt  and 
never  practiced  were  an  abomination.  And  so  we  find 
that  his  earliest  critical  attitude  is  one  of  intense  hostility 
to  all  theorizing.  In  a  review  of  Sulzer's  book  on  the 
fine  arts  he  wrote  for  the  Gelehrte  Anzeigen: 

He  who  has  had  no  sensuous  experience  of  the  fine  arts  had 
better  let  them  alone.  Why  should  he  concern  himself  with 
them?  Because  it  is  the  fashion?  Let  him  consider  that  all 
theorizing  blocks  his  way  to  true  enjoyment,  for  a  more  perni- 
cious thing  than  that  has  not  been  invented. 

And  further  on  in  the  same  review: 

The  only  concern  of  the  artist  is  that  he  shall  feel  his  life's 
happiness  to  be  nowhere  but  in  his  art;  that,  absorbed  in  his 


3o6  GOETHE 

instrument,  he  live  there  with  all  his  feelings  and  powers.  As 
for  the  gaping  public,  whether  it  can  or  can  not  account  to 
itself  for  the  thing,  when  it  has  done  gaping,  of  what  impor- 
tance is  that? 

In  a  letter  of  1773  we  read: 

The  plastic  arts  now  have  me  almost  entirely.  What  I  read 
and  do  I  do  for  their  sake,  and  I  am  constantly  learning  how 
much  more  valuable  it  always  is  to  put  hand  to  the  veriest 
trifle  and  school  oneself  than  to  give  the  most  perfect  critical 
account  of  someone  else's  virtuosity. 

Writing  to  Jacobi  in  the  summer  of  1774  he  expressed 
himself  thus: 

You  see,  my  dear  fellow,  what  is  after  all  the  beginning  and 
the  end  of  all  writing,  the  reproduction  of  the  world  about  me 
by  means  of  the  inner  world,  which  seizes  all  things,  connects 
them,  recreates  them,  kneads  them,  and  gives  them  forth  again 
in  a  form  and  manner  of  my  own.  God  be  praised,  that  re- 
mains an  eternal  mystery  which  I  do  not  care  to  reveal  to  the 
gapers  and  babblers. 

To  complete  the  picture  I  add  a  few  more  citations 
from  the  Gelehrte  Anzeigen.  The  first  is  from  a  review 
of  Schummel's  *  Sentimental  Journeys/  one  of  the  many 
German  imitations  of  Sterne: 

All  his  characters  are  unreal.  He  has  never  loved  and  never 
hated,  the  good  Herr  Preceptor.  When  he  wants  to  make  one 
of  his  creatures  act  for  us  he  just  puts  his  hand  in  his  pocket 
and  juggles  out  something  from  his  bag. 

/       This  is  from  a  review  of  Blum's  lyric  poems : 

Why  are  the  poems  of  the  old  skalds,  Celts,  Greeks,  and  even 
of  the  Orientals,  so  strong,  so  fiery,  so  great?  Because  nature 
impelled  them  to  sing,  like  the  bird  in  the  air.  As  for  us — we 
can  not  conceal  it — we  are  impelled  by  an  adventitious  feeling 
that  we  owe  to  our  admiration  of  the  ancients  and  to  the  pleas- 
ure we  have  in  them;  it  is  for  that  reason  that  our  best  songs, 


THE  CRITIC  307 

with  a  few  exceptions,  are  mere  imitations.  .  .  .  The  best  poet 
degenerates  if  he  thinks  of  the  public  and  is  more  filled  with 
the  desire  of  fame,  especially  journalistic  fame,  than  with  his 
subject. 

In  a  review  of  Sulzer  he  quotes  these  words  from  his 
author :  '  Especially  has  the  tender  mother  [nature] 
deposited  the  full  charm  of  her  winsomeness  in  those 
objects  which  are  most  necessary  to  our  happiness, 
notably  in  the  blessed  union  whereby  man  finds  a  mate.' 
Then  he  comments  savagely  as  follows : 

What  we  see  in  nature  is  power,  devouring  power,  nothing 
stationary,  everything  transitory;  a  thousand  germs  destroyed, 
a  thousand  born,  every  moment;  great  and  full  of  meaning, 
infinitely  manifold,  beautiful  and  ugly,  good  and  evil — all  exist- 
ing side  by  side  with  equal  rights.  And  art  is  the  exact  oppo- 
site: it  springs  from  the  individual's  effort  to  maintain  himself 
against  the  destructive  power  of  the  All. 

In  these  citations  we  may  glimpse  the  simple  creed 
that  informs  Goethe  and  gives  him  his  criteria  for  judg- 
ing the  work  of  others.  It  is  that  the  artist  as  such  must 
have  no  creed;  that  is,  no  creed  derivable  from  the  intel- 
lect or  accountable  to  it.  Rules,  conventions,  theories, 
principles,  inhibitions  of  any  sort  not  born  of  his  own 
immediate  feeling,  are  no  concern  of  his.  They  pro- 
ceed from  an  inferior  part  of  human  nature,  being  the 
work  of  gapers  and  babblers.  The  meanest  creation 
that  is  the  genuine  product  of  feeling,  mood,  and  tem- 
perament is  better  than  the  best  of  theories.  As  an 
intellectual  being  the  artist  may  perhaps  deign  to  con- 
sider them  in  a  sterile  frame  of  mind,  but  when  doing 
his  work  he  must  forget  them  and  surrender  himself 
entirely  to  his  senses,  his  mood,  his  vision.     It  is  for  him 


3o8  GOETHE 

to  do,  and  by  his  doing  to  compel  the  gapers  and  babblers 
to  revise  their  rules. 

In  the  light  of  calm  reflection  this  creed  of  the  youth- 
ful Goethe  appears  as  good  doctrine  rather  intemperately 
stated  and  badly  grounded.  A  perfectly  reasonable 
theory  of  the  artistic  process  may  include  the  doctrine 
that  fundamentally  the  process  is  not  an  affair  of  the 
reason.  But  there  is  nothing  to  be  gained  by  disparag- 
ing the  reasoning  process  as  such,  even  if  we  must  rec- 
ognize its  limitations.  It  can  not  be  proved  that  a  record 
of  a  man's  feelings,  even  in  their  chance  vagaries,  is  more 
precious  than  a  record  of  his  thoughts,  even  in  their  most 
strenuous  effort.  And  then  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
untrammeled  freedom.  In  the  esthetic  sphere  a  break  for 
freedom  never  means  anything  more  than  the  throwing 
off  of  some  particular  fetter  that  has  become  irksome  in 
order  to  put  on  another.  This  was  in  due  time  borne  in 
upon  Goethe,  as  we  shall  presently  see.  Meanwhile,  to 
bring  out  still  more  clearly  the  lights  and  shadows  of  his 
early  position,  I  will  cite  a  passage  from  '  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter.'  It  was  written,  seemingly  about  1880,  in  the  second 
book  of  the  *  Theatrical  Mission '  and  afterwards  incor- 
porated with  little  change  in  the  '  Apprenticeship  ' : 

What  is  it  that  troubles  men  except  that  their  ideas  can  not 
make  connection  with  things,  that  enjoyment  steals  away  from 
under  their  hands,  that  the  thing  desired  often  comes  too  late, 
and  that  all  attainment  fails  to  produce  in  their  hearts  the  effect 
which  desire  had  led  them  to  anticipate?  To  all  this  fate  has 
made  the  Poet  superior,  as  were  he  a  god.  He  sees  the  aim- 
lessly moving  hurly-burly  of  passions,  families,  kingdoms,  the 
unsolvable  riddles  of  misunderstanding,  where  often  only  a 
single  monosyllable  were  needed  for  the  solution — he  sees 
these  things  cause  unspeakable  and  irremediable  confusions. 
He  feels  the  sadness  and  the  joy  of  every  human  fate.    While 


THE  CRITIC  309 

the  man  of  the  world  crawls  along  his  course  in  consuming 
melancholy  over  some  great  loss,  or  meets  his  lot  with  extrava- 
gant joy,  the  sensitive,  volatile  soul  of  the  Poet  moves  lightly, 
like  the  wandering  sun,  from  night  to  day,  and  with  gentle 
transition  he  tunes  his  harp  to  joy  and  sorrow.  Native  in  the 
depths  of  his  heart,  the  fair  flower  of  Wisdom  grows  forth; 
and  while  others  suffer  in  all  their  being  as  in  a  waking  dream, 
he  lives  the  dream  of  life  as  one  awake.  The  rarest  occur- 
rence is  to  him  at  the  same  time  past  and  future.  And  so  the 
Poet  is  at  once  teacher,  prophet,  friend  of  the  gods,  and  of 
men. 

II 

For  tracing  the  evolution  of  Goethe's  critical  way  of 
thinking  during  his  first  decade  in  Weimar,  the  data  of 
positive  fact  are  scanty  and  unimportant.  His  letters 
allude  but  rarely  to  his  reading  and  reflection  in  the 
esthetic  domain,  and  the  eight  volumes  of  his  collected 
works  published  by  Goschen  in  1788-90  contain  no  crit- 
ical writing.  The  mental  readjustment  that  had  been 
taking  place  is  revealed  only  in  his  poems  and  plays. 
We  can  glimpse  it  as  an  accomplished  fact  in  '  Tasso,' 
where  the  poet  is  no  longer  thought  of  as  a  sensitive 
plate — to  use  a  metaphor  that  Goethe  would  not  have 
understood — no  longer  as  a  mere  recorder  of  what  he 
finds  and  feels,  but  as  a  person  whose  ear  is  attuned 
to  the  harmony  of  it  all.  This  is  a  very  different  con- 
ception, since  it  implies  that  there  is  under  the  manifold- 
ness  of  phenomena  a  harmony  which  the  ordinary  dull 
ear  hears  only  as  a  jangle  of  discordant  notes.  The 
poet's  business  is — in  this  later  view  of  him — to  detect 
the  harmony,  and,  of  course,  to  make  it  audible  to  others. 
But  this  is  philosophy,  theory, — the  very  thing  that  had 
been  so  disdainfully  placed  under  the  ban  a  few  years 
before. 


3IO  GOETHE 

The  new  doctrine  is,  to  dwell  on  it  a  moment,  that  the 
artist,  more  especially  the  poet,  is  not  a  copyist  but  an 
interpreter.  He  hears  what  others  do  not  hear,  sees 
what  they  do  not  see ;  while  to  much  that  they  do  see  and 
hear  he  is  insensitive.  In  other  words,  he  selects  and 
recombines  in  his  own  way,  for  his  own  purpose,  the 
purpose  being  to  produce  an  effect  of  harmony.  In  his 
study  of  rocks,  plants,  and  animals  Goethe  had  come  to 
feel  that  mere  accurate  description  of  the  sensible  facts 
was  not  in  itself  science,  but  at  best  only  the  raw  material 
of  science.  The  really  important  thing  was  to  know 
what  nature  had  been  driving  at  in  fashioning  things  thus 
and  so;  that  is,  to  spell  out  their  meaning.  And  by  a 
parity  of  reasoning  he  concluded  that  mere  copying  of 
nature  was  not  in  itself  art.  Art  could  never  be  a  mere 
chunk  of  nature.  It  was  necessary  to  select  from  her 
infinite  store  such  facts  as  suited  one's  purpose  and  com- 
bine them  in  such  a  way  as  to  put  meaning  into  the  copy. 

Thus  the  door  to  the  chambers  of  gray  theory — that 
door  which  he  had  once  closed  with  an  impatient  slam- 
was  gently  reopened,  and  he  entered  in — to  find  himself 
in  a  rather  interesting  place.  During  the  whole  period 
of  his  friendship  with  Schiller  we  find  him  speculating 
a  great  deal  about  art  in  general  and  about  various  arts 
in  particular.  At  first  it  seemed  to  him  a  strange  busi- 
ness, quite  out  of  harmony  with  his  nature,  but  he  soon 
took  to  it  kindly.  Unlike  Schiller  he  never  imagined 
that  speculation  about  the  nature  of  art  could  be  of  use 
to  the  artist  in  the  act  of  creation.  To  the  end  of  his 
days  artistic  creation  continued  to  be  for  him  a  matter 
of  following  one's  instinct;  but  he  thought  that  clear 
and  correct  ideas  about  the  nature  of  art  might  be  of 


THE  CRITIC  311 

considerable  use  in  the  appreciation  of  it.  Hence  his 
growing  eagerness  to  disseminate  his  ideas;  and  hence, 
after  the  Horen  had  gone  under,  his  starting  of  the 
Propylden  to  serve  as  an  organ  for  them. 

A  few  quotations  from  the  introduction  to  the 
Propylden  will  indicate  the  point  of  view  at  which  he 
had  arrived  by  1798: 

The  principal  demand  made  upon  the  artist  is  that  he  cleave 
to  nature,  study  her,  imitate  her,  and  bring  forth  something 
similar  to  her  phenomena.  How  great,  how  prodigious,  this 
demand  is — this  often  escapes  attention,  and  the  true  artist  him- 
self learns  it  only  with  increasing  culture.  Nature  is  separated 
from  art  by  a  huge  chasm  which  genius  itself  can  not  cross 
without  external  aids. 

This  doctrine  [of  polarity,  or  manifoldness  in  unity],  we 
shall  make  it  our  business  to  explain  for  the  artist;  and  we  can 
the  better  hope  to  offer  something  that  he  will  welcome,  since 
we  shall  be  concerned  only  to  interpret  and  refer  to  funda- 
mental principles  that  which  he  has  hitherto  done  from  instinct. 

When  an  artist  takes  hold  of  an  object  in  nature  that  object 
no  longer  belongs  to  nature;  one  may  say  that  by  abstracting 
that  in  it  which  is  significant,  characteristic,  interesting,  the 
artist  at  that  very  moment  creates  it,  or  rather  gives  to  it  a 
higher  value  it  did  not  have  before. 

The  genuine  law-giving  artist  strives  for  art-truth;  the  law- 
less one  who  follows  blind  impulse,  for  the  actuality  of  nature. 
By  the  former  art  is  brought  to  its  highest  perfection,  by  the 
latter  to  its  lowest  estate. 

The  order  of  ideas  here  set  forth  leads  naturally 
enough  to  the  conception  of  typical  art.  It  is  held  that 
the  essential  thing  in  the  artistic  process  is  an  act  of 
selection.  From  all  aspects  or  qualities  of  an  object  the 
artist  chooses  those  which  he  will  portray  and  ignores 
the  rest.  But  on  what  principle  is  he  to  make  the  selec- 
tion? Goethe's  answer  is  that  he  must  select  what  is 
significant,    characteristic,    interesting.     But    when    we 


312  GOETHE 

reach  this  point  we  reach  a  parting  of  the  ways.  For 
if  we  ask  the  question,  What  is  it  that  makes  an  object 
interesting  or  significant,  various  answers  are  possible. 
One  may  answer  that  it  all  depends  on  the  temperament 
of  the  observer.  Setting  out  on  that  path  we  arrive 
finally  at  pure  impressionism,  and  art  becomes  a  bit  of 
life  as  seen  by  a  temperament.  Another  might  say  that 
what  makes  an  object  significant  or  interesting  is  what  is 
peculiar  to  it,  what  differentiates  it  from  all  other  objects. 
In  this  direction  lies  the  possibility  of  caricature. 

Goethe's  theory  was  that  what  makes  an  object  sig- 
nificant— he  was  very  fond  of  the  word  bedeutend — is 
that  which  pertains  to  the  type  of  which  it  is  an  example; 
the  pure  type,  divested  of  all  that  is  individual,  accidental,' 
or  eccentric.  He  would  have  said,  probably,  that  Cyrano 
de  Bergerac's  large  nose  was  a  personal  peculiarity  with 
which  an  artist  could  have  no  concern.  Here  again  the 
influence  of  his  scientific  speculations  is  discernible.  He 
had  taught  himself  to  believe  that  nature  works  in  terms 
of  type,  and  that  to  understand  her  visible  forms  is  to 
perceive  the  idea,  the  architectural  plan,  according  to 
which  her  types  are  built.  Translated  into  the  terms  of 
art  this  meant  that  beauty  was  to  be  attained  only  by 
studious  attention  to  the  typical. 

It  is  very  doubtful  whether  such  theorizing  about 
nature  and  art  was  ever  of  practical  use  to  anyone. 
Whatever  formula  may  emerge  from  the  ratiocinative 
process;  whatever  be  the  nature  of  the  bed-rock  one 
thinks  to  have  found  at  the  bottom  of  logic's  muddy 
waters,  a  real  artist,  whether  with  brush  or  chisel  or  pen, 
will  always  prefer  to  build  on  his  own  foundations  and 
take  the  chances.     In  such  taking  of  chances  lies  all  the 


THE  CRITIC  313 

hope  and  all  the  promise  of  progress  in  art.  So  far  as 
Goethe  himself  is  concerned,  I  am  unable  to  see  that  his 
theory  helped  him  as  an  appreciator.  As  a  theorist  he 
was  engaged  in  the  very  human,  very  fascinating,  busi- 
ness of  trying  to  justify  his  feelings  and  his  taste  to  his 
intellect.  That  is  what  we  all  do  all  the  time.  Such 
attempts  never  have  any  other  than  a  short-lived  regu- 
lative value :  the  fashion  changes  and  they  are  as  the 
snows  of  yesteryear.  It  may  be  confidently  affirmed  that 
the  work  done  by  Goethe  during  the  time  when  he  was 
most  under  the  influence  of  the  ideas  just  set  forth  was 
not  his  best,  either  in  the  creative  or  the  critical  domain. 

Ill 

During  the  years  of  his  connection  with  Schiller  the 
critical  manner  of  Goethe  was  often  sharply  censorious. 
He  seems  to  have  believed  for  a  while  that  the  pubHc 
taste  could  be  improved  by  cudgeling.  One  of  his  early 
contributions  to  the  Horen  was  a  short  paper  entitled 
'  Literary  Sansculottism.*  It  is  a  savage  attack  on  a 
writer  in  the  Berlin  Archiv  der  Zeit  who  had  expressed 
his  regret  that  the  Germans  were  so  poor  in  prose  clas- 
sics. Goethe's  article  is  mere  objurgation  and  does  not 
illuminate  the  subject  at  all.  Many  of  the  '  Xenia '  are 
merely  captious,  going  out  of  their  way  to  take  a  shot  at 
men  who  hardly  deserved  the  attention.  One  reads  the 
epigrams  today  with  a  feeling  of  wonder  that  such  anger 
could  have  found  lodgment  in  celestial  minds. 

A  mildly  contentious  spirit,  tempered  by  the  respect 
long  felt  for  a  great  man,  is  revealed  in  the  comments  on 
Diderot's  '  Essays  on  Painting,'  which  were  posthu- 
mously published  in  1794,  some  thirty  years  after  they 


314  GOETHE 

had  been  written.  Goethe  read  the  essays  with  interest 
and  found  that  two  of  them  dealt  with  subjects  that  were 
just  then  very  much  in  his  own  thoughts,  namely,  the 
relation  of  nature  to  art,  and  the  significance  of  color. 
He  was  meditating  a  general  introduction  to  the  plastic 
arts,  but  on  reading  Diderot's  essays  gave  up  the  larger 
plan  and  decided  to  translate  the  two  just  named  and  to 
supply  a  running  comment  of  his  own.  The  papers 
appeared  in  the  Propylden  for  1799.  As  an  enemy  of 
mannerism  and  conventionality  Diderot  had  demanded 
an  unconditional  following  of  nature — all  very  much  in 
the  spirit  of  the  youthful  Goethe.  But  nay,  says  the 
Goethe  of  1799.  *  Wonderful,  excellent  Diderot,  why 
did  you  wish  to  use  your  great  influence  to  confound 
[nature  and  art]  instead  of  discriminating?'  The  true 
doctrine  is  then  put  thus: 

Nature  organizes  a  living,  indifferent  being,  art  a  dead  but 
significant  being;  nature  something  real,  the  artist  something 
apparent.  To  the  work  of  nature  the  artist  must  add  (what 
was  not  there  before)  significance,  feeling,  thought,  effect  on 
the  mind;  in  the  work  of  art  he  must  find  all  that  already  there. 
A  perfect  imitation  of  nature  is  in  no  sense  possible ;  the  artist 
is  called  only  to  represent  the  surface  of  what  appears.  The 
outside  of  the  vessel,  the  living  whole,  that  which  speaks  to  all 
our  faculties  of  mind  and  sense,  that  which  stirs  our  desire, 
uplifts  our  minds,  and  makes  us  happy  by  its  possession,  that 
which  is  vigorous,  vivid,  perfected,  beautiful — this  is  the  ar- 
tist's appointed  sphere. 

In  his  Hfe  of  Diderot  John  Morley  quotes  this  pas- 
sage and  adds  the  comment  that  '  Goethe,  as  usual,  must 
be  pronounced  to  have  the  last  word  of  reason  and  wis- 
dom, the  word  which  comprehends  most  of  the  truth  of 
the  matter.'  Speaking  for  myself  as  a  humble  layman, 
I  can  not  see  that  there  is  any  '  truth  of  the  matter  ' ;  any, 


THE  CRITIC  315 

that  IS,  which  is  statable  in  absolute  terms.  The  history 
of  any  art,  of  art-epochs,  and  of  taste,  seems  to  show- 
that  there  is  an  eternal  oscillation  between  the  crude 
actuality  of  nature,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  selective, 
purposive,  interpretative  effort  of  the  human  mind,  on 
the  other.  When  at  any  time  production  veers  far 
toward  either  side  an  inevitable  reaction  sends  it  over 
toward  the  other.  And  so  the  ark  floats  and  will  con- 
tinue to  float  on  the  river  of  time.  But  there  is  no  point 
or  strip  between  the  two  shores  where  we  can  say: 
Here  and  not  elsewhere  is  the  region  of  true  art.  All 
the  dogmas  on  that  subject  are  but  ten-pins  set  up  by  one 
generation  to  be  bowled  over  by  the  next. 

In  the  summer  of  1799  Goethe  and  Schiller  exchanged 
ideas  on  the  subject  of  dilettantism — a  word  they  had 
just  invented.  A  letter  of  June  22  discloses  Goethe  as 
planning  a  rather  elaborate  work  on  the  subject,  but  only 
the  analytic  outline  was  actually  written  and  this  was 
not  published  until  1833.  The  temper  in  which  the  work 
was  conceived  appears  from  a  passage  of  the  letter  to 
Schiller  as  follows: 

When  we  open  our  sluices  some  day  there  is  going  to  be  the 
most  awful  fracas.  For  we  will  send  a  veritable  flood  over  the 
whole  pleasant  vale  wherein  botchwork  has  so  comfortably  set- 
tled. And  since  the  chief  mark  of  the  botcher  is  incorrigibility, 
and  since  the  men  of  our  day  are  afflicted  with  a  simply  bestial 
self-conceit,  they  will  yell  when  they  see  their  grounds  ruined. 
.  .  .  But  that  is  not  to  be  helped;  judgment  must  pass  over 
them.  We  will  let  our  ponds  grow  deep  and  then  suddenly 
pierce  the  dams.    There  will  be  a  mighty  flood. 

After  the  Propylden  had  gone  the  way  of  the  Horen, 
perishing  for  lack  of  support,  one  can  notice  a  gradual 
abatement  of  Goethe's  polemic  ardor  over  questions  of 


3i6  GOETHE 

esthetic  theory.  While  the  spirit  of  the  crusader  still 
continued  to  haunt  him  when  he  thought  of  Sir  Isaac 
Newton,  his  criticism  in  the  domain  of  imaginative  lit- 
erature now  took  on  more  and  more  the  form  of  calm 
characterization.  He  may  have  felt  that  his  polemic 
zeal  and  his  erudite  studies  of  Greek  and  Italian  artists 
whose  works  were  not  at  hand  for  inspection,  and  in 
whom  very  few  persons  took  any  interest — he  may  have 
felt  that  all  this  was  estranging  him  from  the  living  con- 
cerns of  mankind  and  perhaps  playing  into  the  hands  of 
those  very  dilettanti  of  whom  he  had  such  a  poor  opinion. 
At  any  rate  his  attitude  toward  the  public,  including  the 
gapers,  babblers,  and  botchers,  now  became  gradually 
more  tolerant,  more  conciliatory.  Something  of  the 
spirit  of  live-and-let-live  came  over  him. 

In  the  year  1804  he  began  to  write  reviews  for  the 
Jena  Litteratiirzeitimg  and  continued  to  do  so  until  1807. 
These  reviews,  numbering  in  all  about  a  score,  are  in 
the  main  rather  spiritless — by  no  means  as  keen  and  vig- 
orous as  those  written  thirty  years  before.  At  first  they 
seem  to  be  just  ordinary  hack-work,  but  on  looking  more 
closely  one  sees  that  this  is  not  so.  One  becomes  aware 
of  a  studious  effort  to  see  the  book  just  as  it  is  from  the 
author's  point  of  view,  to  get  its  exact  savor,  and  to 
describe  it  rather  than  to  pass  judgment.  The  reviewer 
seems  to  be  looking  at  his  book  much  as  a  naturalist 
might  look  at  a  new  plant  or  animal,  concerned  chiefly  to 
understand  its  nature  and  affinities.  Blame  is  rarely 
bestowed,  and  then  only  for  lack  of  character,  which  is 
the  one  unpardonable  sin.  Whoever  has  a  character,  be 
it  ever  so  rude,  humble,  uncouth,  or  plebeian,  gets  his  due 
meed  of  recognition  and  praise. 


THE  CRITIC  317 

Thus  we  find  commendatory  notices  of  one  Grubel's 
poems  in  the  Bavarian  dialect  and  of  Rebel's  Alemannic 
poems,  both  as  exhibiting  the  character  of  the  plain 
people.  The  first  volume  of  Arnim  and  Brentano's 
'  Wunderhorn '  is  very  graciously  reviewed.  '  Such 
poems/  we  read,  *  are  as  true  poetry  as  can  be  found 
anywhere.  Even  for  us  who  stand  on  a  higher  plane  of 
culture  they  have  an  incredible  charm,  such  as  the  sight 
and  the  recollection  of  youth  have  for  old  age.'  The 
conscientious  reviewer  actually  takes  the  trouble  to  char- 
acterize each  one  of  more  than  two  hundred  songs  by  a 
descriptive  phrase  such  as  *  tenderly  Christian,  win- 
some ' ;  '  deep,  mysterious,  dramatically  excellent ' ;  *  vag- 
abondish,  whimsical,  merry ' ;  *  in  the  danse  macabre 
style,  like  a  woodcut,  praiseworthy.'  An  unusually  long 
review  of  the  poems  of  Voss  is  devoted  to  analyzing  his 
poetic  character  as  exhibited  in  his  works  and  modified 
by  his  surroundings  and  opportunities.  But  the  new 
attitude  of  infinite  tolerance  is  best  seen  in  one  of  the 
unfavorable  reviews,  that  of  Klein's  '  Athenor,'  an  epic 
in  sixteen  cantos.     Says  the  reviewer: 

Take  fragments  of  Wieland's  poetic  writings  and  put  them 
together  in  a  witch's  saucepan ;  stew  them  over  a  slow  fire  until 
the  personal  flavor,  the  wit,  the  charm,  and  the  gayety  have 
all  gone  up  in  smoke ;  then  stir  the  remaining  viscous  mass  with 
a  spoon,  and  finally  let  the  product  get  quite  cool  and  stiff — 
and  you  will  have  approximately  an  *  Athenor.'  But  as  the 
case  is  of  such  a  nature  that  we  can  not  know  whether  our 
feeling  for  the  work  may  not  be  an  idiosyncrasy,  we  could  wish 
that  one  of  our  critical  colleagues  would  either  confirm  or  re- 
fute our  opinion  by  a  more  detailed  investigation.  As  the 
shortest  and  most  advisable  procedure,  however,  let  everyone 
who  has  started  a  little  library  illustrative  of  German  char- 
acter and  art  make  a  place  in  it  for  this  '  Athenor ' ;  for  it  is 


3i8  GOETHE 

no  small  pleasure,  on  opening  a  book,  to  encounter  such  an 
esthetic  tragelaph. 

This  language  seems  to  imply,  beneath  the  jocosity,  a 
haunting  doubt  as  to  the  working  value  of  the  principle 
that  something  called  character  is  what  makes  a  poet's 
worth.  What  is  character?  It  is  a  little  remarkable 
that  Goethe  made  no  attempt  to  define  it  exactly.  What 
it  meant  or  might  mean  for  him  appears  in  his  review  of 
the  poems  of  one  Hiller,  a  self-made  man  of  the  people 
who  had  caught  the  trick  of  riming.  The  reviewer  re- 
gards the  case  as  one  of  highly  developed  talent  without 
character.  Hiller  is  actually  likened  to  Socrates.  We 
hear  of  his  technical  aptitude,  practical  sense,  deep  moral 
feeling,  and  self-reliance.  But  all  this  only  makes  him 
the  worse  as  a  poet.     The  review  continues: 

If,  in  the  presence  of  a  great  king,  he  thinks  himself  a  little 
king;  if  he  looks  unabashed  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  at  a  time 
into  the  beautiful  eyes  of  an  amiable  queen,  he  is  not  to  be 
chidden  for  that,  rather  accounted  fortunate.  But  a  true  poet 
would  have  felt  quite  differently  in  the  presence  of  majesty; 
he  would  have  felt  the  incomparable  worth,  the  unattainable 
dignity,  the  prodigious  power  which  set  the  personality  of  a 
monarch  over  against  the  common  man.  One  glance  into  such 
eyes  would  have  sufficed  him ;  so  much  would  have  been  stirred 
up  within  him  that  his  whole  life  would  have  poured  itself  out 
in  a  worthy  hymn  of  praise. 

So  we  see  that  it  pertains  to  the  '  character '  of  a  true 
poet  to  get  very  much  excited  in  the  presence  of  royalty 
and  to  lose  one's  head  in  adulatory  verse. 

IV 

For  more  than  a  decade  after  his  short  campaign  of 
reviewing  for  the  Jena  Litter aturzeitwig  Goethe  pub- 


THE  CRITIC  319 

lished  no  more  literary  criticism  except  that  which  is 
contained  in  his  autobiography.  The  seventh  book  of 
*  Poetry  and  Truth '  opens  with  a  long  retrospect  on  the 
state  of  German  literature  at  the  time  of  his  entering  the 
University  of  Leipsic.  There  are  comments  on  Giin- 
ther,  Liscov,  Rabener,  Gottsched  and  his  Swiss  oppo- 
nents, Wieland,  Lessing,  and  others.  All  this  is  written, 
however,  to  show  how  vacuous  the  literature  was,  in 
the  main,  and  how  little  of  help  and  guidance  it  was 
capable  of  affording.  There  is  no  appraisal  of  any 
writer  in  his  entirety  and  for  his  own  sake.  The  author 
of  *  Poetry  and  Truth'  is  occupied  with  himself;  other 
writers  come  in  only  so  far  as  they  affected  him.  His 
literary  comments  are  thus  in  the  nature  of  casual  obser- 
vations. We  may  pass  them  by  without  further  atten- 
tion and  come  to  the  final  stage  of  Panoramic  Benev- 
olence. 

The  earlier  numbers  of  Kunst  und  Alterthum,  which 
record  the  personal  experience  of  Goethe  as  a  tourist  in 
the  Rhine  country,  contain  nothing  to  the  present  pur- 
pose except  the  evidence  of  his  kindlier  feeling  for  the 
Catholic  church  and  for  Christian  art.  It  is  not  until 
about  1820  that  the  magazine  begins  to  contain  reviews 
of  books.  They  are  most  numerous  in  1823,  1826,  1827, 
and  1828.  The  notices  pertain  to  many  different  species 
of  literature,  for  example:  biography,  drama  (ancient 
Greek,  German,  English,  French,  Italian,  Spanish), 
fiction,  folksongs  (German,  Serbian,  Romaic,  Lithu- 
anian), foreign  journals  (English,  French,  Italian), 
history,  language,  legend,  philosophy,  poetry  (of  many 
nations),  religion,  travels.  Speaking  broadly,  the  per- 
vading spirit  of  all  these  book-notices,  comments,  and 


320  GOETHE 

excerpts  from  the  journals  is  contemplative  rather  than 
critical.  The  writer  has  reached  an  eminence  from 
which  he  looks  out  with  a  serene  and  roving  eye  on  the 
world's  literary  production,  grateful  to  anyone  who  will 
give  him  a  bit  of  soHd  information,  a  new  idea,  an 
esthetic  pleasure,  or  a  true  picture  of  what  is  going  on  in 
the  world.  He  is  frankly  pleased  with  the  homage  paid 
him  as  the  monarch  of  European  letters  but  reacts  to  it 
without  vanity.  He  dislikes  to  say  unpleasant  things 
about  other  writers,  yet  is  not  perturbed  when  they  are 
said  about  himself.  Thus  when  Varnhagen  von  Ense 
brought  out  a  book  on  Goethe  as  seen  by  well-wishing 
contemporaries  he  proposed  a  companion  volume  on 
Goethe  as  seen  by  ill-wishing  contemporaries.  He  said 
in  his  supreme  detachment: 

I  am  moved  to  this  proposal  by  the  consideration  that,  since 
literature  in  general  and  German  literature  in  particular  is  not 
going  to  get  rid  of  me  at  once,  or  hereafter,  as  it  seems,  it 
can  not  help  being  agreeable  to  every  lover  of  history  to  learn 
how  things  looked  in  our  time  and  what  spirits  were  dominant. 
Such  a  compilation  would  be  highly  interesting  to  me  myself 
in  looking  back  over  my  life;  for  I  can  not  deny  that  many 
have  detested  me  and  hated  me  and  represented  me  to  the 
public  accordingly. 

Such  boundless  charity,  brooding  over  a  great  flood  of 
ephemeral  publications,  could  hardly  be  expected  to  beget 
much  memorable  criticism.  Nor  did  it.  The  great 
mass  of  these  latest  book-notices  is  nothing  but  sand 
and  gravel;  yet  anyone  w^ho  will  pan  it  carefully  may  find 
here  and  there  a  grain  of  gold  in  the  shape  of  some  far- 
reaching  thought  that  arrests  the  attention  and  lingers 
in  the  memory.     Thus  on  receiving  a  new  manual  of 


THE  CRITIC  321 

esthetics  and  finding  in  it  the  usual  division  of  poetry 
into  lyric,  epic,  dramatic,  and  didactic,  he  wrote  his 
friend  Zelter  that  he  could  make  nothing  of  the  book. 
With  the  letter  he  enclosed  a  notice,  afterwards  printed 
in  Kunst  und  Alterthum,  in  which  occurs  this  sentence: 
'All  poetry  should  be  instructive,  but  unnoticeably;  it 
should  call  our  attention  to  that  about  which  instruction 
were  desirable.  We  ourselves  must  extract  the  teaching 
from  the  book,  just  as  from  life.' 

As  to  the  lesson  to  be  derived  from  his  own  works  he 
expressed  himself  frankly  in  a  short  paper  entitled 
*  Another  Word  for  Young  Poets  ' : 

If  I  were  to  state  what  I  have  been  to  the  Germans  in  gen- 
eral and  to  young  poets  in  particular,  I  think  I  may  call  myself 
their  liberator :  for  in  me  they  have  become  aware  that,  just 
as  man's  life  proceeds  from  within,  so  the  artist  must  work 
from  within ;  seeing  that,  whatever  he  does,  he  will  bring  to 
light  nothing  but  his  own  individuality.  .  .  .  Let  the  young 
poet  utter  only  that  which  lives  and  works  on  with  continuing 
effect.  Let  him  strictly  put  aside  all  spirit  of  opposition,  all 
malevolence  and  evil-speaking,  all  mere  negation;  for  of  that 
nothing  comes. 

Advice  to  young  poets  is  also  the  burden  of  many  a 
talk  with  Eckermann,  albeit  no  one  knew  better  than 
Goethe  that  such  advice  must  always  be  a  sheer  waste 
of  breath.  At  one  time  he  assures  Eckermann,  who  had 
poetic  aspirations  of  his  own,  that  the  great  rule  is  to  be 
oneself  and  cleave  to  nature  in  the  concrete;  more  often 
he  warns  against  his  own  mistakes,  plays  the  school- 
master, and  would  fain  bring  the  young  man  to  his  own 
way  of  thinking.  This  is  one  of  the  inconsistencies 
brought  to  light  in  Eckermann's  curious,  often  mystify- 
ing, ever-fascinating  volumes. 


322  GOETHE 

It  would  be  quite  futile  to  winnow  the  *  Conversa- 
tions *  in  the  hope  of  finding  anything  like  a  critical 
creed  or  even  a  consistent  attitude  with  regard  to  criti- 
cism. What  we  find  is  rather  the  negation  of  all  creeds ; 
an  ever-changing  attitude  which  varies  with  mood  and 
the  barometric  pressure. 

What  a  singularly  perverse  comment,  for  example,  is 
that  of  February  7,  1827,  upon  Lessing: 

Pity  the  extraordinary  man  that  he  had  to  live  in  such  a 
miserable  epoch  that  offered  him  no  better  subjects  than  those 
which  are  treated  in  his  plays.  Pity  him  that  in  his  '  Minna 
von  Barnhelm '  he  had  to  take  an  interest  in  the  squabbles  of 
the  Saxons  and  Prussians,  because  he  found  nothing  better. 
Also  the  fact  that  he  was  continually  polemizing  and  had  to 
polemize  was  due  to  the  badness  of  his  epoch.  In  '  Emilia 
Galotti '  he  had  his  pique  at  the  princes,  and  in  *  Nathan '  at 
the  priests. 

This  from  a  man  who  had  himself  said  that  real  import 
first  came  into  German  literature  with  the  Seven  Years' 
War;  who  had  himself  treated  the  squabbles  of  a  robber 
knight  with  the  empire  and  of  the  Netherlanders  with 
the  Spaniards;  who  had  himself  'polemized*  a  great 
deal  about  this  and  that  and  was  still  on  occasion  venting 
his  spleen  on  the  Newtonians  and  the  Vulcanists! 

Or  take  this  of  February  i,  1827,  from  a  man  who  for 
a  good  part  of  his  life  had  been  preaching  the  impor- 
tance of  seeing  the  thing  just  as  it  is,  and  had  shown 
precious  little  compunction  about  upsetting  conventional 
ideas : 

So  now  they  are  trying  to  undermine  the  Pentateuch,  and  if 
destructive  criticism  is  anywhere  injurious  it  is  in  the  things 
of  religion ;  for  there  everything  depends  on  faith,  to  which  one 
can  not  return  when  one  has  lost  it. 


THE  CRITIC  323 

But  let  us  spy  no  more  upon  the  nodding  Homer. 
Multiplied  indefinitely  such  citations  could  only  prove 
that  Goethe  as  critic,  even  in  his  old  age,  stood  on  no 
surer  ground  than  the  rest  of  us.  As  far  as  the  east  is 
from  the  west  was  he  from  having  reduced  criticism  to 
an  exact  science.  He  continued  to  be,  as  he  had  been, 
an  impressionist,  a  man  of  moods,  hobbies,  prejudices, 
limitations.  It  is  mere  myth  which  imputes  to  him  an 
unprecedented  poise  of  judgment  or  a  supernormal  insight 
into  literary  values.  Occasionally  he  saw  the  books  of 
his  own  day  as  they  are  now  seen  by  posterity  in  the  light 
of  fuller  knowledge  and  a  longer  perspective;  more  often 
he  did  not.  He  harped  much  to  Eckermann  on  the 
worthlessness  of  contemporary  production  in  Germany, 
but  never  talked  to  him  about  the  posthumous  plays  of 
Kleist,  or  the  new  works  of  Grillparzer  or  Heine.  He 
had  a  very  human  bias  in  favor  of  authors,  however  in- 
significant, who  had  burned  incense  on  his  own  altar. 

In  reading  Eckermann  it  is  always  to  be  remembered 
that  we  have  to  do  with  casual  talks  which  may  not  have 
been  taken  down  exactly  or  may  have  overstated  the 
idea  expressed.  Eckermann  was  so  very  docile  and  rev- 
erential that  there  must  have  been  a  terrible  temptation 
to  stuff  him.  The  *  Conversations '  have  the  charm  that 
always  pertains  to  the  casual  talk  of  a  great  man;  but 
they  were  not  intended  for  posterity  and  should  be  used 
with  some  caution  as  an  evidence  of  deliberate  opinion. 
Perhaps  the  real  attitude  of  the  octogenarian  with  regard 
to  letters  is  best  mirrored  in  a  talk  recorded  by  Ecker- 
mann under  date  of  January  31,  1827: 

I  see  ever  more  clearly  that  poetry  is  a  common  good  of  man- 
kind, and  that  it  appears  everywhere,  at  all  times,  in  hundreds 


324  GOETHE 

and  hundreds  of  men.  One  makes  it  a  little  better  than  another 
and  swims  a  little  longer  on  top ;  that  is  all.  So  Herr  Matthison 
must  not  think  that  he  is  the  man,  and  I  must  not  think  that 
I  am  the  man;  but  each  one  must  say  to  himself  that  the  poetic 
gift  is  no  great  rarity,  and  that  no  one  has  any  special  reason 
to  plume  himself  on  the  making  of  a  good  poem.  To  be  sure, 
unless  we  Germans  look  abroad  from  the  little  circle  of  our 
environment  we  are  likely  to  fall  into  pedantic  self-conceit.  So 
I  like  to  look  about  among  foreign  nations  and  I  advise  every- 
one else  to  do  likewise.  National  literature  does  not  mean  much 
now;  the  era  of  world-literature  is  at  hand  and  everyone  must 
do  his  part  to  hasten  it  along.  But  even  in  our  estimation  of 
that  which  is  foreign  we  must  not  cleave  to  anything  in  par- 
ticular and  regard  it  as  a  model.  We  must  not  think  in  that 
way  of  the  Chinese,  or  of  Serbian,  or  Calderon,  or  the  Nibe- 
lungs ;  but  when  we  need  something  as  a  model  we  must  always 
go  back  to  the  ancient  Greeks,  in  whose  works  Beautiful  Man 
is  represented.  Everything  else  we  must  only  regard  his- 
torically, getting  as  much  good  out  of  it  as  we  can. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

FAUST 

It  is  fitting  that  a  book  about  Goethe  should  end  with 
a  survey  of  *  Faust,'  since  there  the  man  is  so  to  speak 
summed  up.  The  theme  attended  him  from  his  twen- 
tieth year  to  his  eighty-first,  and  the  completed  poem  is 
a  stratified  deposit  of  his  best  thinking  as  set  aglow  by 
the  imagination.  Something  similar  might  be  said  of 
'  Wilhelm  Meister,'  but  that  is  far  less  interesting  than 
'  Faust '  because  the  final  phase  of  it  is  so  lacking  in 
coherence  and  finish. 


Looked  at  in  the  large  *  Faust '  is  Goethe's  confession 
of  faith  in  the  goodness  of  life.  I  mean  the  worth- 
whileness  of  man's  life  on  earth,  considered  as  its  own 
end,  its  own  reward.  That  is  what  the  long  poem  with  all 
its  endless  variety  of  incident  and  experience  finally  comes 
to.  Having  lived  a  hundred  years  Faust  is  still  unsated 
with  life.  He  would  fain  dream  and  plan  and  work  a 
little  longer.  He  dies  in  a  rapt  altruistic  vision  of  the 
future,  seeing  in  his  mind's  eye  a  free  people  dwelling  on 
a  free  soil  that  he  has  won  from  the  sea.  He  is  happy 
that  his  name  will  live  for  eons.  He  feels  that  it  is  good 
to  have  lived. 

True,  he  is  afterwards  *  saved '  in  the  theological 
sense.     His  entelechy  brings  up  in  heaven  among  the 

325 


326  GOETHE 

spirits  of  holy  men  and  penitent  women;  and  it  is  a  sort 
of  Christian  heave;2<  for  the  details  were  furnished  by 
the  hagiography  of  the  medieval  church.  Q^et  Faust  has 
never  made  the  slightest  pretense  of  being  a  Christian. 
He  has  neither  believed  nor  worshiped  nor  acquired 
merit  by  good  works.  He  has  always  refused  to  think 
of  heaven  at  all.  Nor  is  his  salvation  presented  as  in 
any  sense  a  reward  of  the  deeds  done  in  the  body.  We 
hear  from  the  saving  angels  that  he  owes  his  fortune  to 
his  always  having  '  striven.'  But  he  has  only  striven 
as  all  men  strive  and  must  strive  if  they  are  to  live  at  all. 
All  that  he  has  done  is  simply  to  persist  in  his  own  being. 
He  has  never  been  '  converted.'  He  has  just  kept  moving 
as  impelled  by  his  feelings,  desires,  and  convictions^ 
Can  any  man  do  less  without  becoming  as  a  stone  or  a 
plant?  '  I  have  just  rushed  through  the  world,'  he  says 
in  his  old  age — 

I  caught  each  lure  of  pleasure  by  the  hair, 

And  if  it  slipped  away  I  let  it  fare: 

I  have  just  wished,  and  done,  and  wished  again,  y 

And  so  stormed  thro'  my  life  with  might  and  main,  y^ 

There  is  plainly,  from  any  Christian  point  of  view,  no 
saving  grace  in  that  kind  of  living. 

^o  the  heaven  at  which  Faust  arrives  is  the  heaven  that 
we  are  all  destined  for.  In  other  words,  it  is  nothing 
more  than  a  symbol  of  Goethe's  universalism — his  belief 
in  the  Eternal  Goodness.  The  blessed  state  is  not  a  re- 
ward of  peculiar  merit  but  a  stage  of  progress.  This 
can  only  mean  that  Faust's  earthly  life  was  good  in  the 
sight  of  the  Eternal,  albeit  some  of  it  was  bad  in  the 
sight  of  men.  Thus  we  come  back  to  where  we  started-r 
the  message  of  '  Faust '  is  an  affirmation  of  the  goodness 


FAUST  327 

of  life.  The  celestial  mountain  at  the  end  of  the  poem 
was  invented  to  round  out  a  dramatic  scheme  that  had 
long  haunted  Goethe's  imagination,  but  it  does  not  grow- 
out  of  his  philosophy.  Perhaps  that  is  the  main  reason 
why  his  heaven  is  so  unalluring  in  spite  of  his  great 
effort  to  invest  and  suffuse  it  with  a  holy  religious  atmos- 
phere. At  the  last  Faust  is  supposed  to  be  purged  of 
all  his  mortal  dross,  that  is,  of  everything  that  made  him 
a  man.  He  is  also  deprived  of  the  company  o^  the 
comrade  who  had  made  his  earthly  life  interesting.^'  Will 
he  not,  when  the  novelty  has  worn  off,  find  the  new  state 
of  being  a  trifle  inane?  What  will  there  be  for  such  an 
entelechy  as  his  to  do  or  to  enjoy  during  the  endless  lapse 
of  eternity? 

How  came  this  idea  of  life's  intrinsic  value  and  suf- 
ficiency, the  idea  that  the  purpose  of  life  is  to  live,  and 
that  living  is  its  own  end  and  reward,  to  bulk  so  large 
in  Goethe's  thinking?  For  after  all  it  is  nothing  more 
than  the  universal  will  to  live  translated  into  the  terms 
of  the  philosophizing  mind.  It  is  the  tacit  assumption 
on  which  all  living  and  all  thinking  rest.  Like  a  kitten 
or  a  colt,  or  an  eagle  buffeting  the  wind,  the  normal 
human  being  has  no  need  of  ghosts  come  from  the 
grave  to  tell  him  why  he  is  alive.  Without  the  vital 
urge  the  human  race  would  have  come  to  an  end  ages 
ago,  and  with  it  all  philosophy,  science,  art,  and  religion. 
We  are  simply  obliged  to  postulate  the  goodness  of  Hfe, 
since  it  is  the  condition  of  all  other  goods  that  we  can 
possibly  imagine.  Ultimately  it  is  the  measure  of  all 
goods  and  gives  us  our  main  criterion  by  which  to  judge 
of  their  worth.  Think  of  elysium  as  we  may,  we  can 
not  think  of  it  as  a  sequel  of  non-existence. 


328  GOETHE 

Sophocles  makes  a  chorus  say  that  '  not  to  be  born  is, 
past  all  prizing,  best;  but  when  a  man  hath  seen  the 
light,  this  is  next  best  by  far,  that  with  all  speed  he  should 
go  thithef,  whence  he  hath  come.'  This  is  the  language 
of  morbid  depression  over  the  ills  of  life.  We  have 
no  means  of  proving  such  a  thesis,  and  it  goes  against 
the  deep  instinct  of  humankind.  When  Mephistopheles, 
surveying  the  dead  body  of  Faust  and  recalling  all  the 
restless  striving  which  has  now  come  to  an  end,  observes 
that  he  would  prefer  the  Eternal  Void,  he  speaks  the 
language  of  diabolical  cynicism.  At  best  it  is  the  Devil's 
preference,  not  man's.  Many  there  be  who,  could  they 
foresee  the  course  of  their  life  before  being  shot  into  it, 
would  decline  the  gift.  But  we  do  not  foresee  and  are 
given  no  choice.  Without  being  consulted  about  it  we 
are  thrust  into  life  and  commanded  to  live.  The  indi- 
vidual may  grow  weary  and  throw  away  the  boon,  but  if 
he  does  so  he  may  at  least  be  sure  that  not  many  will 
follow  his  example;  and  that  if  all  were  to  follow  it,  the 
total  effect  would  be  to  restore  our  planet  to  the  condi- 
tions which  existed  before  the  advent  of  homo  sapiens. 
Would  that  be  better?  Even  the  most  ferocious  pessi- 
mism usually  shrinks  from  such  a  dismal  conclusion  as 
that.  So  then  it  must  be  better  to  play  the  game.  This 
is  the  doctrine  of  *  Faust/ 


/i 


II 


The  germ  of  the  poem  is  despair  of  the  intellectual 
life.  At  the  time  of  his  early  musings  on  the  theme 
Goethe  himself  had  felt  that  despair  acutely.  He  had 
tasted  of  academic  learning  in  the  fields  of  law,  philoso- 
phy, logic,  ancient  literature,  chemistry,  medicine,  and  had 


FAUST  329 

found  it  all  very  unrefreshing.  It  offered  no  nourish- 
ment for  the  soul.  He  had  also  gone  into  the  occult, 
had  read  diver's  old  books  of  magic,  alchemy,  and 
demonology,  and  had  given  himself  a  laboratory  course 
in  a  half-serious  search  for  the  philosopher's  stone.  The 
upshot  of  it  all  was  a  feeling  amounting  to  conviction 
that  the  learning  of  the  day  was  a  dreary  futility.  There 
was  no  certainty  anywhere,  no  rock-bottom  of  indubi- 
table truth — nothing  but  opinion,  guesses,  empty  verbiage^ 
and  the  witless  chewing  of  tradition's  cud.  There  was 
no  joy  and  no  real  light  to  be  got  from  study. 

But  religion  had  come  home  to  him  as  a  personal  mat- 
ter. He  had  learned  to  pray  and  had  known  the  ecstatic 
tears  and  fervid  exaltations  of  the  mystic.  Here,  in  the 
feeling  of  personal  communion  with  God,  was  that 
which  at  least  gave  joy  for  the  time  being,  and  at  best 
seemed  to  point  the  way  to  a  higher,  surer,  more  inspir- 
ing knowledge  than  was  to  be  had  from  the  reading  of 
many  books. 

Is  it  strange  that  Goethe's  artist-nature,  given  as  it 
was  to  the  intense  visualization  of  his  own  experience 
in  some  alien  mask,  should  have  been  strongly  drawn  to 
the  puppet-play  hero  ?  To  be  sure,  (the  legendary  Faust 
is  anything  but  an  aspiring  soul.  His  riot  of  pleasure  is 
distinctly  of  the  earth,  ^earthy.  But  might  he  not,  like 
many  another  man^have  been  better  than  his  posthumous 
reputation"?  There  were  certain  traits  of  his  character, 
notably  his  mental  curiosity,  his  thirst  for  travel  and 
adventure,  his  love  of  antique  beauty  as  embodied  in 
Helena,  that  really  favored  such  a  view  of  him.  At  any 
rate  they  were  not  the  traits  of  a  swinish  man.N  Might 
he  not  have  been  a  misunderstood  and  hence"^aligned 


330  GOETHE 

searcher  after  real,  worth-while  knowledge?  Or  might 
he  not  have  been  a  superman  actuated  by  a  passion  for 
making  the  most  of  Hfe  while  it  lasted? 

But  there  was  his  magic.  The  legend  regarded  that 
as  utterly  bad,  but  made  him  only  a  practitioner  of  the 
vulgar  black  art.  The  things  that  he  does  are  silly.  But 
Goethe  had  read  of  natural  magic,  magia  naturalis,  which 
was  a  very  different  thing.  Natural  magic  is  conceived 
by  its  late-medieval  votaries  as  the  noblest  of  arts,  the 
queen  of  the  sciences,  the  perfect  flowering  of  religion. 
Clearly  then  Faust's  dabbling  in  magic,  tho  the  legend 
looked  on  it  with  horror,  did  not  of  necessity  stamp  him 
as  a  bad  man  on  the  way  to  hell. 

So  young  Goethe  planned  a  Faust-drama  to  run  along 
the  lines  of  the  puppet-play  in  respect  of  action  and  inci- 
dent, but  on  a  much  higher  plane  of  thought  and  imagi- 
nation. It  was  not  to  be  an  ordinary  stage-play  with 
division  into  acts  and  observance  of  the  unities;  but 
rather  a  life-history  presented  in  a  succession  of  dramatic 
pictures.  In  1774  and  1775  he  wrote  down  a  portion  of 
what  had  come  into  his  mind — that  which  has  been 
known  to  the  world  since  1887  as  the  Gochhausen 
*  Faust.'  These  scenes  are  the  main  source  of  all  that 
we  definitely  know  about  the  earliest  phase  of  Goethe's 
masterpiece. 

The  Gochhausen  *  Faust '  introduces  the  far-famed 
magician  as  a  youngish  university  t"iacher — he  has  been 
in  the  business  about  ten  years — who  has  traversed  the 
learning  of  the  four  faculties  and  found  it  all  vanity  and 
vexation  of  spirit.  He  is  no  wiser  than  he  was  before. 
Nothing  can  be  known.  Withal  he  is  >oor,  obscure,  and 
oppressed  by  the  feeling  that  his  booki  -h  life  is  contrary 


FAUST  331 

fo  nature.  He  turns  to  natural  magic  in  the  hope  that 
some  powerful  spirit  may  show  him  what  '  holds  the 
world  together  at  its  core '  and  enable  him  to  '  behold 
all  energy  and  the  seeds  of  things.'  We  get  a  hint  that 
his  desire  is  humanly  unrealizable,  but  Faust  aspires  to 
be  more  than  a  man.  He  dreams  of  putting  off  the 
trammels  of  the  flesh,  of  becoming  part  of  nature's  life- 
blood,  of  mystic  illumination,  and  of  divine  activity.  His 
conjuring  works.  Amid  terrifying  portents  the  Earth- 
spirit  appears  to  him  in  flame — an  awesome  symbol  of 
terrestrial  energy.  At  first  Faust  is  terrified.  Then  he 
plucks  up  courage  and  affirms  his  '  nearness '  to  the 
dread  apparition.  The  reply  is :  *  Thou  art  like  the 
spirit  whom  thou  comprehendest,  not  like  me.'  The 
Spirit  vanishes  suddenly  and  Faust  is  left  in  utter  despair. 
But  at  that  moment  his  famulus  enters  and  there  ensues 
a  midnight  conversation  about  oratory  and  the  study  of 
history.  - 

Then  there  is  a  break  in  the  continuity.  In  the  next 
scene  Mephistopheles  has  somehow  come  into  the  action 
— presumably  sent  by  the  Earth-spirit  as  a  being  of  lower 
order  whom  Faust  can  comprehend — and  has  become 
Faust's  familiar.  We  hear  him,  dressed  in  Faust's  aca- 
demic gown,  coach  a  freshman  with  respect  to  the  four 
faculties.  Then,  of  a  sudden,  Faust  has  turned  rake. 
With  the  aid  of  his  familiar  he  makes  the  acquaintance 
of  a  pretty  girl,  gets  her  with  child,  and  then  goes  away 
to  amuse  himself  while  she  is  arrested  and  held  in  prison. 
When  he  learns  what  has  happened  he  fiercely  lays  the 
blame  on  Mephistopheles  and  demands  to  be  taken  forth- 
with to  the  imprisoned  Gretchen,  that  he  may  rescue 
her  from  the  clutches  of  the  law.     In  the  prison  he  is  a 


332  GOETHE 

remorseful  but  impotent  witness  to  her  half-insane  rav- 
ings and  her  death. 

Here  the  so-called  *  Ur-Faust '  ends.  The  greater 
part  of  it  is  taken  up  with  the  twenty  scenes  of  the  love- 
tragedy,  which  in  a  very  important  sense  is  episodical. 
Both  in  form  and  substance  it  is  quite  alien  to  the  genius 
of  the  legend./  There  is  very  little  of  the  supernatural  in 
it  and  that  little  is  unimportant.  But  for  his  name  there 
is  nothing  to  suggest  that  Mephistopheles  is  anything 
more  than  an  ordinary  human  rake's  friend  and  abettor. 
His  is  simply  the  devilishness  which  prompts  a  man  to 
follow  the  pull  of  sexual  passion  reckless  of  consequences(]3 
Faust  needs  no  urging;  it  is  he  that  does  the  urging^/*'  -7  ^ 

The  whole  episode  of  Gretchen  grew  out  of  Goethe^s 
deep  interest  in  the  girl-mother  who  kills  her  child  in 
order  to  escape  social  ostracism.  It  is  his  arraignment — 
and  a  terrible  arraignment  it  is — of  the  laws,  the  mores, 
and  the  state  of  public  opinion  which  made  such  tragedies 
only  too  common.  But  as  part  of  a  play  based  on  the 
story  of  the  magician  Faust  Goethe's  pathetic^  and  real- 
istic love-tragedy  is  an  alien  element.  ^ 

What  then  of  the  Faust-drama  as  a  whole,  one  inevi- 
tably asks.  How  would  it  have  ended  if  its  author  had 
finished  it  in  the  days  of  his  youth?  Of  course  some 
ending  must  have  floated  before  his  mind,  however 
vaguely,  and  it  can  not  have  been  salvation  in  a  Christian 
heaven.  That  was  possible  for  the  Goethe  of  1831,  but 
not  for  the  Goethe  of  1775.  At  that  earlier  date  a  Faust 
ending  among  the  saints  would  have  seemed  to  him  no 
Faust  at  all;  for  the  very  heart  of  the  old  story,  well 
known  to  every  one,  was  the  magician's  colossal  wicked- 
ness, his  pact  with  the  Devil.     Still  more  certain  is  it 


FAUST  333 

that'  Goethe  can  never  have  intended  to  follow  the  legend 
and  damn  his  hero.  He  had  put  too  much  of  himself  into 
the  character  for  thatj 

But  if  Faust  was  thought  of  neither  as  a  bad  man  on 
the  way  to  perdition  nor  yet  as  a  potentially  good  man 
who  would  blunder  into  heaven  in  the  fulness  of  time, 
what  other  possibiHty  remains?  The  answer  seems  to  be 
that  the  Faust  of  Goethe's  early  musings  had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  Christian  scheme  of  rewards 
and  punishments,  of  heaven  and  hell.  His  Faust  was  a 
superman,  quite  reckless  of  conventional  good  and  evil 
and  dowered  with  an  overmastering  desire  to  live  himself 
out  as  fully  as  possible.  To  break  out  of  his  human 
prison-house  and  lord  it  over  time  and  space;  to  know 
and  do  and  enjoy;  to  succeed  and  to  fail;  to  suffer  and 
grow  strong,  to  run  the  whole  gamut  of  man's  possibili- 
ties— such  was  his  dream.  Mephistopheles  was  to  be  the 
purveyor  of  this  experience — not  a  malignant,  soul- 
seeking  fiend,  not  especially  a  tempter  to  vice,  but  an  em- 
bodiment of  the  will  to  live;  an  incarnation  of  that  devil 
that  resides  in  every  man,  luring  him  on  hither  and 
thither,  to  try  this  and  that,  for  joy  or  for  pain.  This 
devil,  of  course  an  expert  in  magic,  was  to  be  the  abettor 
of  Faust's  wild  ambition  in  all  the  matters  of  time  and 
sense,  but  totally  unable  to  comprehend  or  satisfy  his 
higher  spiritual  aspirations.  The  superiority  of  Faust  to 
his  servitor  is  steadily  presumed  and  often  asserted  in 
the  early  scenes.  The  reader  feels  perfectly  sure  that  the 
higher  nature  is  not  going  to  be  subjugated  by  the  lower. 

But  how  was  it  all  to  end  in  the  theater?  For  a  posi- 
tive answer  to  this  question  the  data  are  insufficient.  It 
is  an  open  field  for  speculation.     For  myself  I  imagine 


334  GOETHE 

that  if  Goethe  had  gone  on,  in  the  days  of  his  youth,  to 
write  that  part  of  the  play  which  was  to  follow  the 
death  of  Gretchen,  he  would  first  have  taken  Faust  to 
some  royal  court,  in  accordance  with  the  puppet-play 
scheme,  and  would  there  have  put  him  through  various 
more  or  less  interesting  experiences.  At  last  Faust 
would  have  found  something  to  do,  something  to  engage 
his  altruistic  social  feeling,  and  would  have  died  recon- 
ciled to  life  and  glad  of  having  lived.  Perhaps — this  is 
the  merest  guess-work — just  before  the  curtain  went 
down  the  Earth-spirit  w^ould  have  shown  himself  again 
and  have  said  to  the  man  about  to  die  something  like  this :' 
'  I  have  now  permitted  thee,  with  the  aid  of  my  envoy, 
to  exhaust  the  possibilities  of  the  life  on  earth,  so  far  as 
a  man  may  know  them :  pass  on  to  another  state  of  being, 
where  a  new  life,  now  unimaginable,  awaits  thee.' 

But  there  would  have  been  no  stage  heaven,  no  antici- 
pation, on  the  boards,  of  the  divine  verdict.  Yet  the 
action  would  have  been  so  managed  that  an  average 
spectator  would  have  left  the  theater  feeling  that  such 
a  Faust  was  probably  safe  in  the  hands  of  his  Creator. 

Ill 

The  literary  renown  of  *  Faust '  is  apt  to  blind  us,  by 
the  glamor  of  its  many  excellences,  to  the  inherent  ab- 
surdity of  the  fable.  We  are  required,  as  it  were,  to  be- 
lieve in  magic;  that  is,  to  accept  imaginatively  an  order 
of  things  which  we  well  know  to  be  altogether  chimerical. 
It  is  an  order  of  spirits,  devils,  demons,  witches,  conjur- 
ing, hocus-pocus,  transformations  of  men  into  animals 
and  of  animals  into  men;  of  tricks,  illusions,  magic  man- 
ties,  and  magic  wands;  of  horses  that  fly  in  the  air,  of 


FAUST  335 

treasures  got  from  nowhere,  marriage  with  insubstantial 
ghosts,  hallucinatory  fantoms,  and  all  that.  In  short, 
the  atmosphere  of  the  poem  is  the  atmosphere  of  folk- 
lore, of  the  fairy-tale;  in  other  words,  of  ancient  super- 
stition disporting  itself  in  unrealities  that  were  never 
beautiful  or  elevating,  but  rather  ugly  and  debasing. 
Taken  in  the  aggregate  this  network  of  superstition  once 
formed  a  terrible  fetter  for  the  human  mind.  That 
'  wonder-world  of  faerie,'  which  so  captivated  the 
Romanticists,  was  really,  when  we  come  close  to  it,  very 
much  the  same  wonder-world  which  savage  tribes  inhabit 
at  the  present  time.  This  fact  has  been  so  firmly  estab- 
lished by  modern  anthropology  that  there  is  no  need  of 
laboring  the  point  here. 

Thus  the  Age  of  Enlightenment,  into  which  Goethe 
was  born,  had  good  reason  to  preen  itself  on  having 
ceased  to  believe  in  the  superstitions  of  spiritism.  These 
were  classed,  rightly  enough,  among  the  childish  things 
which  it  was  well  to  have  put  away.  In  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  hardly  less  than  today,  intelli- 
gent folk  regarded  magic  as  a  fraud,  and  mostly  as  a 
vulgar  fraud.  None  but  the  very  benighted  still  took  it 
seriously.  While  it  still  figured  in  chap-books,  crude 
shows,  and  puppet-plays  for  children,  it  was  well  under- 
stood to  be  nothing  but  make-believe.  There  was  no 
place  for  it,  seemingly,  on  the  higher  levels  of  literary  art. 
We  may  be  sure  that  if  Goethe  had  derived  his  ideas  of 
magic  solely  from  the  authentic  Faust  tradition  he  never 
would  have  undertaken  to  poetize  it.  It  was  too  vulgar, 
too  lacking  in  spirituality.  But  the  notion  of  natural 
magic,  tho  this  was  in  truth  no  less  fantastic  and  chimer- 
ical than  the  vulgar  black  art,  gave  him  at  least  a  starting- 


336  GOETHE 

point  for  something  at  once  serious  and  noble.  For  he 
was  able  to  connect  that  with  his  own  discontents, 
struggles,  and  aspirations. 

But  once  bravely  tapped,  in  the  opening  scene  with  the 
Earth-spirit,  this  source  of  inspiration  soon  ran  dry. 
And  really  it  is  hard  to  see  how  anything  could  have  been 
made  of  it  in  the  sequel.  The  invention  is  too  supernal, 
too  recondite,  too  remote  from  the  realities  of  human 
life  in  which,  after  all,  Goethe  was  always  mainly  inter- 
ested. So  he  soon  saw  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  lean 
more  on  authentic  tradition,  such  as  everyone  under- 
stood or  could  easily  be  made  to  understand,  ^and  to 
achieve  poetic  dignity  by  means  of  symbolism.  It  was 
necessary  to  humanize  Faust  without  sacrificing  anything 
of  his  aspiring  spirituality,  and  to  humanize  Mephis- 
topheles  by  making  him  more  of  a  cynical  wag  who 
should  eir[oy  his  role  without  taking  himself  too  seriously 

as  devil/l{llS*A^'\ 

It  is  plain  that  some  such  thoughts  as  these  must  have 
been  running  in  the  mind  of  Goethe,  when,  in  the  year 
1788,  he  resumed  work  on  the  strange  drama  that  had 
come  to  a  standstill  some  fifteen  years  before.  He  was  in 
Italy  now,  and  very  much  estranged  from  the  whole  inner 
world  of  his  pre-Weimarian  youth.  As  he  read  over 
his  old  manuscript,  already  grown  yellow  with  age,  he 
saw  that  he  had  imagined  two  very  different  Fausts  and 
had  left  an  unbridged  chasm  between  them:  first  a  dys- 
peptic dreamer  of  transcendental  dreams,  and  then  a 
rakish  seducer  tormented  by  his  conscience.  So  he  in- 
serted the  scene  *  Witch's  Kitchen '  to  bridge  the  chasm. 
An  aphrodisiac  drink,  which  is  at  the  same  time  a  re- 
newer  of  youth,  is  brought  in  to  account  for  Faust's  sud- 


FAUST  337 

den  depravity.  That  misconduct  which  had  originally 
been  motivated  solely  by  the  pull  of  sexual  passion,  with 
no  need  of  encouragement  from  any  external  devil,  is 
now  set  over  to  the  account  of  diabolical  instigation. 

Of  course  the  witch's  brew  in  Faust's  veins  does  not 
really  excuse  him,  does  not  spike  the  guns  of  the  prosaic 
moralist;  nor  was  it  seriously  meant  to  do  so.  From  the 
start  it  was  a  part  of  the  plan  that  Faust  should  sin  and 
suffer  egregiously,  that  being  a  part  of  the  human  ex- 
perience that  he  coveted.  His  rejuvenation  is  only  a 
stage  device  whereby  a  middle-aged  artist,  looking  back 
somewhat  cynically  on  the  poetic  plans  of  his  youth, 
sought  to  remedy  as  best  he  could  the  difficulty  that  he 
had  created  for  himself  by  inserting  a  realistic  tragedy 
of  man  and  maid  in  the  midst  of  a  dramatic  action  domi- 
nated everywhere  else  by  magic  and  hocus-pocus.  In 
some  way  the  character  of  Faust  had  to  be  rescued  and 
ennobled  if  he  was  not  to  forfeit  sympathy  and  be  held 
worthy  of  his  legendary  fate.  And  since  his  conduct 
toward  Gretchen  was  humanly  unpardonable  there  was 
no  better  expedient  than  to  fall  back  on  magic  for  the 
motivation  of  his  rakish  conduct. 

The  frame  of  mind  in  which  the  First  Part  was  com- 
pleted between  1797  and  1802,  the  work  done  at  this 
time  by  way  of  filling  in  gaps,  the  partial  elaboration  of 
certain  scenes^  that  were  to  follow  the  death  of  Gretchen, 
the  decision  to  reserve  all  that  for  a  Second  Part — all 
this  is  the  subject  of  comment  in  the  biographical  por- 
tion of  this  volume.  What  is  important  to  note,  for  one 
who  is  interested  in  the  poem  as  a  whole  rather  than  in 
the  making  of  it,  is  that  the  new  plan  was  only  an  ampli- 
fication of  the  original  scheme — by  no  means  a  radical 


338  GOETHE 

alteration.  The  Prolog  invites  us,  on  the  authority  of 
God  himself,  to  regard  Faust  as  a  '  confused '  servant 
of  the  Lord ;  as  a  v^anderer  in  the  dark  who  is  going  to  be 
led  out  into  the  clear  in  the  fulness  of  time.  The  Lord 
is  infinitely  patient,  infinitely  tolerant  and  liberal.  He 
has  provided  the  Devil  as  a  comrade  of  man  to  stir  him 
up  and  keep  him  on  the  move.  The  Devil  is  to  have 
free  rein  as  long  as  Faust  shall  live  on  earth;  after  that 
— such  is  the  clear  implication — the  Devil's  services  will 
not  be  needed.  Mephistopheles  accepts  the  offer  on  these 
terms.  He  makes  a  brave  show  of  expecting  to  win  and 
to  come  back  and  triumph  over  the  Lord,  but  we  know, 
of  course,  that  he  will  be  discomfited. 

Such  a  devil  is  as  far  as  possible  from  the  malignant 
fiend  of  Christian  mythology.  It  is  no  affair  of  his  to 
trap  immortal  souls  into  eternal  bondage.  He  is  not 
even  man's  enemy,  but  rather  his  '  companion '  on  the 
path  of  life..  It  is  he  who  suppHes  the  motive  power 
without  which  man  would  soon  come  to  complete  stag- 
nation. He  is  not  interested  in  dead  men.  His  func- 
tion in  the  divine  government  of  the  world  is  to  incite 
men  to  action  by  holding  before  them  the  lure  of  pleas- 
ure, of  satisfaction.  In  other  words,  to  drop  the  lan- 
guage of  symbolism,fMephistopheles  is  the  embodiment^ 
of  those  instincts,  passions,  appetites,  which  clamor  for 
gratification  and  urge  men  on  in  the  illusory  hope  of 
finding,  somewhere  on  earth,  a  permanent  satisfaction^ 

At  the  time  of  writing  the  Prolog  (1797)  Goethe  had 
definitely  decided  to  make  no  further  use  of  his  invented 
mythology  of  the  Earth-spirit,  but  to  fall  back  on  the 
familiar  conceptions  of  the  Christian  tradition  with  re- 
spect to  heaven  and  hell.     Not  only  should  his  hero  be 


FAUST  339 

'  saved '  in  the  conventional  sense,  but  his  salvation 
should  be  shown  on  the  stage  as  a  part  of  the  dramatic 
action.  And  so  the  momentous  wager  was  formulated  as 
we  find  it  in  lines  1692  ff.  Faust  bets  his  immortal  soul 
on  the  proposition  that  Mephistopheles  will  not  be  able 
to  satisfy  him  with  any  form  of  earthly  pleasure  to  such 
degree  that  he,  Faust,  shall  wish  to  delay  the  flight  of 
time.  If  he  shall  ever  say  to  the  passing  moment,  *  Pray 
tarry,  thou  art  so  fair,'  that  is  to  be  the  end.  Mephis- 
topheles is  to  be  '  free  of  his  service.'  And  the  impli- 
cation is,  of  course,  that  Faust  is  then  to  serve  the  Devil 
forever  on  the  '  other  side.' 

If  we  scrutinize  this  pact  in  the  light  of  the  Prolog  it 
becomes  clear  that  Mephistopheles  has  no  chance  what- 
ever of  any  post-mortem  triumph.  He  will  get  his  re- 
ward as  he  goes  along,  like  any  artist,  in  the  sheer  pleas- 
ure of  doing  his  work.  In  reality,  as  we  know,  he  does 
not  care  for  the  souls  of  dead  men,  albeit  he  will  make 
a  show  of  doing  so  when  the  time  comes,  because  he  has  a 
reputation  to  maintain.  He  is  the  Devil  and  must  e'en 
play  his  part  to  the  end.  As  for  Faust,  of  course  he 
will  never  be  completely  satisfied  with  the  present 
moment,  for  that  would  imply  a  state  without  desires, 
hopes,  plans,  or  aspirations.  Such  a  result  can  not  come 
as  a  consequence  of  pleasure.  To  wish  to  eternalize  a 
momentary  pleasure  of  any  conceivable  kind  is  childish. 
It  would  be  to  abrogate  one's  human  nature  and  become 
as  a  swine  wallowing  in  the  mire.  There  is  no  danger 
that  Faust  will  ever  come  to  that  point,  for  he  has,  and 
knows  that  he  has,  aspirations  that  look  beyond  time  and 
sense.  So  he  enters  into  the  pact  with  perfect  confidence 
and  takes  pains  to  make  very  clear  that  what  he  is  after 


340  GOETHE 

is  not  pleasure,  but  experience  as  wide  and  deep  as  possi- 
ble. Then  the  love-tragedy  falls  into  its  place  as  his  ex- 
perience of  passionate  error,  grief,  remorse,  and  self- 
contempt. 

IV 

When  we  come  to  the  *  great  world  *  of  the  Second 
Part  we  are  back  again  in  the  genuine  atmosphere  of 
the  legend,  in  the  wonderland  of  the  supernatural.  We 
enter  it  over  a  bridge  of  transparent  symbolism.  Faust 
reappears  in  the  role  of  wanderer — with  weary  body 
and  tortured  soul.  He  lies  down  at  nightfall  among  the 
Alpine  flowers.  Good  fairies  of  the  night-time  put  him 
to  sleep,  watch  over  his  slumber,  and  give  him  back  to 
the  daylight  a  new  man  in  soul  and  body.  The  glorious 
Alpine  sunrise  quickens  his  aspiration  to  *  strive  ever 
onward  toward  the  highest  existence.'  Does  anyone 
think  he  is  let  off  too  easily?  One  might  say  so  quite 
justly  if  we  were  here  on  the  plane  of  every-day  ethics, 
law,  and  custom.  But  we  are  in  fairyland.  Faust  is 
really  not  let  off  at  all.  He  suffers  like  a  man.  His 
bath  in  the  mountain-dew  of  Lethe  concentrates  symboli- 
cally into  a  single  night  the  long  remorse  and  the  slow 
recovery  which  in  the  world  of  reality  would  take  many 
years. 

We  come  now  to  what  Goethe  called  the  *  summit '  of 
the  entire  drama. 

The  exploits  of  the  legendary  Faust  are  mostly  puerile 
tricks  with  no  potential  poetry  in  them.  But  there  is  one 
exception — his  marriage  to  Helena.  In  this  wonderful 
invention,  implying  that  the  bold  bad  doctor's  amorous 
desire  had  not  been  able  to  content  itself  with  anything 


FAUST  341 

short  of  the  best  that  ever  was,  alive  or  dead,  supersti- 
tious fancy  scored  a  hit.  To  be  sure,  sane  old  Homer 
has  little  to  say  of  Helena's  beauty — ^but  later  poets! 
What  an  ado  over  the  '  face  that  launched  a  thousand 
ships ! '  Little  wonder  that  Goethe,  enamored  from  his 
youth  of  things  Greek,  soon  saw  that  here  was  some- 
thing that  he  could  use;  something  that  might  be  made 
the  very  corner-stone  of  his  temple.  But  hozv  to  use  it 
was  a  problem  that  teased  him  at  intervals  for  half  a 
century  before  it  was  finally  solved  in  the  '  Helena '  of 
1827,  that  is,  the  third  act  of  the  Second  Part. 

At  first  he  thought  of  Helena  as  a  ghostly  paramour, 
not  unlike  her  prototype  in  the  legend,  who  should  cohabit 
with  Faust  in  a  castle  on  the  Rhine.  But  such  a  connec- 
tion would  hardly  do  for  a  man  bent  on  '  striving  to- 
ward the  highest  existence.'  A  nobler  Faust  called  for  a 
nobler  Helena.  And  so,  in  the  days  of  his  ultra-classi- 
cism, he  decided  to  present  Helena  as  a  revenant  shade 
from  Hades.  Orpheus-like  Faust  should  visit  the  lower 
world  and  procure  from  Queen  Persephone  the  release 
of  his  Beloved  for  a  temporary  sojourn  on  earth. 
Helena  should  have  the  perfect  semblance  of  her  former 
self,  but  only  a  dim  ghostly  memory  and  hence  no  con- 
sciousness of  guilt.  Faust  should  appear  as  feudal  lord 
of  the  Peloponnesus,  inhabiting  a  Gothic  castle  in  Ar- 
cadia, the  fabled  land  of  beauty  where  once  a  wonderful 
Golden  Age  had  brightened  the  life  of  men.  In  this  way 
Helena  could  be  made  to  suggest,  not  only  the  perfection 
of  woman's  beauty,  but  also  the  whole  far-off  glory  of 
Greece;  and  so  to  exert  on  Faust  that  sanative,  uplifting, 
and  energizing  influence  which  contact  with  the  Greek 
spirit  had  once  exerted  over  the  men  of  the  Renaissance 


342  GOETHE 

and  later  over  Goethe  himself  and  his  contemporaries 
of  the  eighteenth  century. 

And  so  it  was  that  the  Helena  episode,  after  its  long 
incubation,  finally  saw  the  light  as  a  '  classico-romantic 
fantasmagory  '  and  was  published  separately  with  that 
sub-title  in  1827.  No  wonder  that  readers  of  that  day, 
among  them  Thomas  Carlyle,  hardly  knew  what  to  make 
of  it.  Not  till  the  very  end  did  they  get  a  clear  hint 
that  Phorkyas  was  Mephistopheles,  and  even  then  it  was 
not  quite  clear  why  the  northern  Devil  had  chosen  to 
put  on  that  particular  mask.  And  then  the  chronology  1 
A  German  magician  of  the  sixteenth  century,  husband  to 
a  Greek  shade  of  the  Homeric  Age,  and  father  to  a  son 
who  suggested  things  altogether  modern!  At  first  it 
seems  fantastic  to  the  point  of  absurdity;  but  when  one 
knows  the  legend  and  the  long  history  of  Goethe's  mus- 
ings everything  falls  into  its  place  quite  naturally,  and 
the  symbolism  is  as  clear  as  crystal.  And  what  splendid 
poetry,  especially  in  the  classic  choruses  and  further  on 
in  the  Euphorion  scenes!  Unearthly  it  no  doubt  is. 
Nothing  could  be  more  contemptuous  of  the  realistic 
formula.  And  yet  it  is  all  so  clearly  seen,  so  perfectly 
thought  out,  so  infinitely  suggestive.  The  most  strenu- 
ous foe  of  poetic  symbolism  has  but  to  read  it  to  be  con- 
vinced of  the  error  of  his  ways. 

With  the  third  act  finished  and  in  print  it  remained 
only  to  fill  in  before  and  after.  This  was  the  work 
which  occupied  the  aged  poet  from  1827  to  the  summer 
of  183 1.  Mephistopheles  was  first  sent  ahead  to  the 
court  of  the  rotten  empire  to  prepare  a  place  for  his 
comrade  by  ingratiating  himself  as  court  fool  and  pro- 
pounding a  grand  scheme  of  financial  redemption.     The 


FAUST  343 

Masquerade  provides  the  opportunity.  Faust  in  the 
mask  of  Plutus  does  a  wonderful  bit  of  conjuring  which 
dehghts  his  Majesty  and  causes  him  to  install  the  two 
wonder-workers  as  official  purveyors  of  amusement. 
The  Emperor  demands  to  see  Helena  and  Paris,  and 
Faust  is  sent  after  them — not,  however,  to  Hades,  but 
to  the  vasty  Realm  of  Ideals  presided  over  by  the  mys- 
terious Mothers.  He  falls  frantically  in  love  with  the 
fantom  Helena  that  he  has  evoked,  attempts  to  touch 
the  form  contrary  to  orders,  and  is  paralyzed. 

To  restore  him  to  his  senses  Mephistopheles  takes  him 
back  to  his  long-deserted  study,  where  Wagner,  now  a 
world-famous  man  of  science,  is  trying  to  make  a  man 
synthetically.  With  the  help  of  Mephisto's  magic  the 
t  great  experiment  succeeds,  and  the  delectable  Homun- 
culus  appears  as  a  radiant  incorporeal  mannikin  in  a 
glass  bottle.  He  straightway  reads  the  sick  man's  mind, 
diagnoses  his  case,  and  prescribes  that  he  be  taken  to  the 
land  of  his  dreams,  to  classic  soil,  to  the  Thessalian  Wal- 
purgis-Night.  Arrived  on  the  Pharsalian  plain  Faust 
at  once  comes  to  himself  and  sets  out  among  the  fantoms 
to  find  Helena.  The  Centaur  Chiron,  learning  of  his 
strange  infatuation,  judges  him  to  be  in  need  of  medical 
aid  and  takes  him  to  the  priestess  Manto,  daughter  of 
the  divine  physician  Asklepias.  With  Manto  Faust  dis- 
appears en  route  for  Hades.  The  intended  scene  before 
the  throne  of  Queen  Persephone  was  never  written  but 
left  to  the  imagination. 

Then  we  follow  the  fortunes  of  Mephistopheles.  Pur- 
suing his  comparative  investigations  among  the  classical 
spooks  in  a  cynical  yet  not  indocile  spirit,  the  northern 
Devil  finally  comes  across  the  three  supremely  hideous 


344  GOETHE 

daughters  of  Phorkys,  who  live  in  the  dark  and  have 
one  eye  and  one  tooth  in  common.  Accosting  the  trio 
with  gentlemanly  veneration,  Mephistopheles,  seemingly 
just  for  a  lark,  begs  the  sisterhood  to  condense  the 
essence  of  the  trio  into  two  and  to  lend  him  the  form  of 
the  third.  They  consent  and  the  thing  is  done.  Thus 
we  are  prepared  for  the  Devil's  mask  in  the  third  act. 
He  had  to  have  a  classical  mask  of  some  kind,  and  Goethe 
needed  the  Supreme  Ugliness  for  a  picturesque  contrast 
to  the  Supreme  Beauty. 

Finally  the  fourth  and  fifth  acts  were  written,  a  part 
of  the  fourth  coming  last  to  completion.  At  the  end  of 
the  Arcadian  fantasmagory  Faust  is  caught  up  into  the 
air  in  a  cloud  formed  of  the  vanished  Helena's  dress  and 
wafted  northward  '  far  above  all  that  is  vulgar.'  He 
lands  on  a  mountam-peak,  presumably  in  the  Tirolese 
Alps,  and  his  vehicle  of  cloud  parts  in  twain.  One  part 
floats  away  eastward,  taking  for  an  instant  the  semblance 
of  an  antique  heroine  and  suggesting  to  Faust  the  '  grand 
import  of  fleeting  days.'  The  other  rises  high  in  air, 
recalling  memories  of  youthful  love.  Mephistopheles 
arrives  in  seven-league  boots.  For  a  little  while  the  pair 
debate  the  merits  of  vulcanism  in  geology,  and  then  the 
question  arises,  What  next? 

On  his  aerial  journey  from  Arcadia  Faust  has  noticed 
and  been  irritated  by  the  waste  of  energy  involved  in  the 
ceaseless  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tides.  He  would  fain  fight 
the  arrogant  sea  and  make  habitable  land  of  the  tide- 
swept  shore.  Mephistopheles  notes  that  he  '  comes  from 
heroines  '  and  agrees  to  further  his  ambition.  We  learn 
that  the  Emperor  is  now  in  grave  trouble.  A  condition 
of  anarchy  following  the  paper-money  debauch  has  led 


FAUST  345 

to  the  demand  for  a  strong  ruler.  A  pretender  to  the 
throne  has  taken  the  field,  and  the  two  armies  are  about 
to  meet  in  decisive  battle.  Faust  and  Mephistopheles 
take  the  side  of  the  legitimists  and  quickly  win  the  battle 
by  magic.  Faust  receives  as  his  reward  the  coveted 
stretch  of  tide-swept  beach. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  act  the  great  engineering 
project  has  been  carried  out.  Faust  is  boundlessly  rich, 
yet  there  is  a  thorn  in  his  flesh.  Not  far  from  his  palate 
is  a  rise  of  ground  which  he  covets,  but  an  aged  couple 
who  live  there  refuse  to  part  with  their  home.  Exasper- 
ated by  their  obstinacy  he  sends  his  servitor  to  remove 
them  to  a  better  home  that  he  has  selected  for  them  else- 
where. Mephistopheles  executes  the  order  with  such 
brutality  that  the  old  people  are  killed  and  their  cottage 
set  on  fire.  As  the  conscience-smitten  Faust  is  observ- 
ing the  ruin  from  his  palace  at  midnight  four  shadowy 
forms  drift  toward  him  from  the  smoke  of  the  burning 
cottage.  One  of  them,  Dame  Care,  slips  through  the 
rich  man's  keyhole  and  croons  in  his  ear  a  dismal  strain 
on  the  awful  estate  of  the  man  who  has  become  a  victim 
of  worry.  Faust  defies  her  magnificently,  declaring 
that  he  has  always  led  a  life  of  action,  content  with  the 
circle  of  the  earth  as  known  to  him.  He  has  never  wor- 
ried about  the  unknown  future  and  refuses  to  worry  now. 
Whereupon  Dame  Care  breathes  on  his  eyelids  and 
makes  him  blind. 

But  the  deepened  darkness  without  does  not  dim  the 
inner  light  of  his  will  to  live  and  to  do.  He  still  has  a 
great  plan  to  carry  out.  He  must  drain  a  pestilential 
swamp  that  is  poisoning  his  domains.  In  the  ecstasy  of 
his  planning  for  the  future,  seeing  in  his  mind's  eye  a 


346  GOETHE 

free,  industrious,  social-minded  people  dwelling  on  a  free 
soil  that  he  has  won  from  the  sea,  he  thinks  he  might 
say  to  the  passing  moment,  '  Pray  tarry,  thou  art  so 
fair/    Then  he  sinks  back  dying. 

What  follows — the  battle  of  the  good  and  evil  spirits 
for  the  possession  of  the  dead  man's  soul,  the  final  tri- 
umph of  the  saving  angels,  the  arrival  of  Faust's  entel- 
echy  among  the  saints,  his  induction  into  the  new  life — 
all  this  need  not  concern  us  in  detail.  It  grew  out  of  the 
dramatic  requirements  of  the  theme.  We  know  from 
the  first  how  it  will  all  turn  out.  ' 


It  has  seemed  worth  while  to  follow  the  genesis  of 
*  Faust '  in  some  detail  and  to  lay  bare  the  thread  on 
which  all  the  parti-colored  beads  are  strung  because  only 
in  that  way  can  the  poem  be  understood  in  its  essential 
import.  If  we  try  to  take  it  as  if  it  had  fallen  from  the 
sky  ready-made,  considering  only  what  it  is,  as  we  rightly 
do  in  the  case  of  imaginative  productions  that  have 
sprung  from  a  single  creative  impulse,  we  shall  find  it 
simply  incommensurable — to  use  a  favorite  word  of 
Goethe — with  the  human  intellect.  Conceive  the  '  idea  ' 
as  we  may,  there  is  much  that  will  seem  irrelevant. 
There  are  scenes  in  which  a  simple  dramatic  motive  is 
covered  up  with  a  mass  of  embroidery  which  tends  to 
obscure  the  main  issue  and  create  a  sense  of  dispropor- 
tion. This  grows  out  of  the  fundamental  character  of 
the  poem  as  presenting  a  life-history  in  dramatic  pic- 
tures. Some  of  the  pictures  are  snap-shots  or  impres- 
sionistic sketches,  while  others  are  elaborate  genre- 
paintings.     The  scene  '  Open  Field '  in  the  First  Part  is 


FAUST  347 

f  limned  in  six  lines,  while  the  Classical  Walpurgis-Night 
takes  nearly  fifteen  hundred.  And  between  the  two  are 
many  gradations. 

But  the  connecting  thread,  that  is,  the  ethico-religious 
trend,  is  not  in  the  least  obscure.  (Whilr'we  can  not  call 
'  Faust '  an  anti-Christian  poem,  in  view  of  its  ending, 
it  certainly  is  opposed  to  the  other-sidedness  of  the  ortho- 
dox Christian  faith.  Goethe  took  sides  frankly  with  the 
Pelagians.     Believing  that  God  is  immanent  in  human 

••  nature,  especially  as  love,  he  was  averse  to  the  idea  that 
a  man,  by  following  his  own  nature,  that  is,  his  divinely 
implanted  instincts,  could  forever  alienate  himself  from 
his  Maker.  The  creature  might  go  wrong  and  suffer, 
but  God  was  back  of  his  world  as  the  Eternal  Pardoner. 
Goethe  was  one  of  those  who  held,  to  put  it  in  Tenny- 
son's familiar  phrase,  that 

somehow  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill.  .- ' 

(^And  then  he  was  opposed,  in  general,  to  the  old  teleo- 
logical  way  of  thinking.  Just  as  the  lamb  is  not  there 
to  supply  man  with  wool  or  the  rose  to  delight  his  senses, 
so  man's  life  on  earth  could  not  depend  for  its  meaning 
or  its  warrant  on  anything  outside  itself.  It  might  be 
the  forerunner  of  an  unknown  and  unimaginable  state 
of  being  after  death,  but  its  end  was  to  be  sought  in 
itself,  not  in  anxious  preparation  for  the  unknowable. 
Out  of  this  way  of  thinking  grew  the  basic  conception 
of  Faust's  character:  his  pride  in  fearing  neither  hell 
nor  devil,  his  consuming  thirst  for  experience,  his  sturdy 
indifference  to  issues  beyond  the  veil,  his  passionate  re- 
fusal to  worry. ; 


348/  GOETHE 

That  Faust  should  *  storm '  or  *  reel '  through  life, 
incurious  of  heaven  and  unafraid  of  hell,  was  the  dom- 
inant idea  of  the  early  plan.  But  when  we  come  to  the 
enlarged  plan  of  a  later  time  we  find  that  a  new  idea  has 
come  in,  namely,  the  idea  that  Faust  should  attain  to 
*  clearness.'  Such  is  the  Lord's  promise  in  the  Prolog. 
Thus  without  any  radical  upsetting  of  the  original  scheme 
the  center  of  gravity  is  shifted  and  we  are  promised  a 
drama  of  mental  clarification.  In  the  course  of  his  reel- 
ing through  life  under  the  dominance  of  passion  and 
instinct  Faust  is  to  learn  wisdom  by  virtue  of  his  indwell- 
ing consciousness  of  the  '  right  way.'  In  other  words, 
life  itself  is  to  clear  up  his  confusion  with  regard  to  life 
and  to  show  him  how  he,  can  best — unconsciously,  of 
course, — serve  the  Lord. 

Taking,  now,  the  point  of  view  of  the  middle-aged 
Goethe,  the  apostle  of  clearness,  let  us  look  a  little  more 
closely  into  this  matter  of  mental  clearing  up.  What  is 
the  exact  nature  of  the  earlier  Faust's  '  confusion '  and 
of  his  later  clarified  wisdom  ?  Does  the  scheme  promise 
anything  more  than  that'  years  will  bring  the  philosophic 
mind,  as  they  do — more  or  less — to  all  merr?  That 
much,  certainly,  it  does  promise,  /in  a  sense  Faust's  ex- 
perience typifies  that  of  men  in  general  as  they  pass  from 
youth  to  age.  But  there  is  more  to  it  than  that.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  Goethe's  hero  is  not  '  man,'  not  a 
typical  or  average  man,  but  a  highly  exceptional  char- 
acter. He  is  a  would-be  superman,  afflicted,  as  a 
psychiatrist  might  say,  with  a  disease  of  the  imagination. 
A  brief  trial  of  the  intellectual  life,  with  insufficient  air 
and  exercise,  has  put  him  out  of  humor  not  only  with 


FAUST  349 

book-learning  but  with  life  in  general.  He  feels  that 
human  life,  with  its  dull  plodding,  its  limitations  and 
heart-aches,  its  painful  ignorance  of  all  that  matters  most, 
is  not  worth  having.  So  he  dreams  of  becoming  a  god, 
a  spirit.  It  is  this  morbid  despair  of  Hfe  of  which  he  is 
to  be  cured. 

The  clearing  up  at  the  end  of  the  Second  Part  has 
three  different  aspects.  In  the  first  place,  Faust  comes 
to  see  that  the  magic  he  invoked  in  his  youth  has  not 
made  matters  better.  In  a  way  the  dreams  of  the  super- 
man have  been  realized.  Mephisto's  magic,  while  of  a 
lower  order  than  that  of  which  he  had  dreamed,  has 
nevertheless  enabled  him  to  move  swiftly  over  the  earth, 
like  the  spirits  of  his  imagination,  to  participate  in  many 
a  scene  of  pleasant  illusion,  and  to  do  all  sorts  of  things 
that  human  beings  can  not  do.  On  the  other  hand,  his 
long  connection  with  spirits  and  incantations  has  en- 
meshed him  in  a  network  of  superstition  so  that  he  can 
no  longer  distinguish  the  true  from  the  false.  He  is 
haunted  by  vague  fears.  The  simplest  occurrence  fills 
him  with  alarm  lest  it  portend  some  evil.  It  were  better, 
he  thinks,  to  *  stand  before  nature  as  a  man  alone.'  This 
we  know  to  have  been  precisely  the  effect  of  magic  on 
our  remote  ancestors  who  believed  in  it  and  tried  to  regu- 
late their  lives  by  it.  Magic  and  what  pertains  to  it  has 
never  been  the  liberator  but  always  the  enslaver  of  the 
Jiuman  psyche. 
'^In  the  second  place,  the  aged  Faust  comes  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  circle  of  the  known  earth,  that  is,  human 
life  with  all  its  drawbacks,  is  not  the  soul's  prison  but  its 
opportunity.  It  affords  suf^cient  scope  for  ever}^  power. 
The  one  thing  needful  is  to  act,  to  keep  moving,  to  be 


350  GOETHE 

good  for  something.     To  one  who  is  good  for  something 
the  world  will  not  be  '  mute.' 

So  let  him  travel  his  appointed  day, 
And  'mid  besetting  ghosts  just  go  his  way; 
Let  him  stride  on,  while  joy  and  pain  betide, 
Each  moment  of  his  life  unsatisfied. 

Finally,  and  most  important  of  all,  Faust  finds,  after 
trying  so  many  things,  that  his  best  satisfaction,  the 
nearest  approach  yet  to  that  happy  moment  which  he 
might  conceivably  wish  to  delay  in  its  flight,  is  the 
thought  of  having  done  a  good  stroke  of  work  to  make 
his  part  of  the  world  a  better  place  for  better  men  to 
come. )  This  thought  may  fairly  be  called  the  secular 
gospel  of  the  modern  man. 

VI 

But  after  all,  It  is  not  mainly  the  philosophy  of 
^  Faust,'  not  the  thread  of  thought  on  which  the  beads  are 
strung,  that  counts  most  for  lovers  of  the  poem.  It  is 
rather  the  beads  themselves,  in  their  rich  variety  of 
form,  substance,  and  color,  that  give  the  poem  its  peren- 
nial fascination.  Certainly  it  as  not  all  inspired^  There  ^ 
are  passages  that  one  would  like  to  put  into  an  apoc- 
rypha ;  but  they  are  not  numerous  andl  the  shrewd  reader 
soon  learns  where  they  are.  fWhat"i4flftaHis  has  an  appeal 
that  custom  can  not  stale  or  repetition  wither.  Here 
and  there  are  difficulties  for  the  understanding/  but  the 
traveler  in  a  poet's  wonderland  must  expect  his  wayside 
trials.  They  go  with  the  voyage — from  the  times  of 
Homer  and  Aeschylus  down  to  yesterday  or  the  day 
before.    ■"  Faust '  is  imaginative  symbolic  poetry.    What 


FAUST  351 

is  best  in  it  can  not  be  adequately  put  in  plain  prose,  or 
transferred  from  one  language  to  another. 

It  is  not  worth  while  to  say  much  here  about  the  long 
eclipse  of  the  Second  Part.  In  an  unlucky  moment 
Goethe  let  fall  a  word  to  Eckermann  anent  the  '  mys- 
teries '  that  he  was  putting  into  the  poem.  For  about 
half  a  century  after  that  the  mysteries  were  much  ex- 
ploited by  prosy  writers  who  tried  to  explain  them  as 
allegories,  abstract  doctrine,  or  veiled  biography.  In 
this  way  they  made  of  the  Second  Part  a  kind  of  literary 
nightmare  in  which  the  lover  of  poetry  could  have  no 
pleasure.  And  as  the  First  Part,  especially  the  love- 
tragedy,  was  enjoyed  by  everybody,  it  became  almost  an 
accepted  dogma  that  the  Second  Part  did  not  really 
count;  that  it  was  an  old  man's  afterthought,  having  no 
vital  connection  with  the  First  Part  and  exhibiting  pain- 
ful signs  of  senile  decay. 

And  then  began  a  reaction,  which  was  greatly  fur- 
thered in  Germany  by  the  frequent  staging  of  the  entire 
'  Faust '  and  perhaps  also  by  the  ever-increasing  popu- 
larity of  Richard  Wagner,  whose  appeal  was  quite  largely 
due  to  his  poetic  symbolism.  And  then  came,  in  1885, 
the  opening  of  the  Goethe  house  in  Weimar  and  the  dis- 
covery of  paralipomena  which  made  it  perfectly  clear 
that  the  Second  Part,  in  its  main  substance  and  drift, 
was  no  afterthought  at  all  but  a  vital  part  of  the  early 
plan.  The  division  into  two  parts  was  nothing  but  a 
matter  of  literary  convenience.  As  for  the  '  mysteries,' 
they  are  much  like  those  which  the  aging  Shakspere  put 
into  the  '  Tempest.'  The  unity  of  the  whole  is  only  the 
unity  of  a  poet's  life.  The  charm  of  the  Second  Part 
resides  in  the  mellow  humor  with  which  the  wisdom  of 


352  GOETHE 

age,  still  mildly  aglow  with  the  old  flame,  plays  with 
the  details  of  absurd  old  legend,  lifting  them  from  the 
vulgar  earth,  even  as  Faust  is  lifted  by  his  vehicle  of 
cloud,  and  making  them  mirror  amid  a  thousand  flashes 
of  imaginative  insight  the  *  grand  import  of  fleeting 
days/ 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 

The  primary  source  of  information  for  that  part  of  Goethe's 
life  described  in  the  first  three  chapters  of  this  volume  is  *  Poetry 
and  Truth  ' ;  see  above  p.  143.  Other  autobiographic  writings  of 
moment  for  particular  phases  of  his  life  v^ill  be  mentioned  in  their 
place  below.  Of  great  importance,  secondly,  are  his  letters,  which 
are  now  accessible  in  chronological  order  in  the  Weimar  Edition 
of  his  works.  This  is  the  edition  referred  to  in  the  ensuing  notes 
unless  some  other  is  specified.  Its  four  divisions  are  denoted  in 
English  as  Works  (52  vols,  of  imaginative  writings)  ;  Scientific 
Writings  (13  vols.)  ;  Diaries  (13  vols.),  and  Letters  (50  vols.). 
Conversations  of  Goethe  are  cited  according  to  Biedermann, 
'  Goethes  Gesprache,'  10  vols.,  1889-1896.  Much  that  came  from 
Goethe's  pen  in  his  early  years  and  is  not  found  in  any  edition 
of  his  works  has  been  very  carefully  edited  by  Max  Morris  in  '  Der 
junge  Goethe,'  6  vols.,  1909-1912. 

Of  the  countless  books,  brochures,  and  articles  dealing  with  par- 
ticular phases  of  Goethe's  life,  a  few  of  the  more  notable  will 
be  mentioned  below  in  the  notes  to  the  separate  chapters.  There 
is  a  good  deal  of  biographic  information  to  be  found  in  the 
Goethe-Jahrbuch  (1880-1913),  also  in  the  Schriften  der  Goethe- 
Gesellschaft  (28  vols.  1885-1913).  In  all  matters  of  bibliographic 
detail  the  scholar's  great  resource  is  Goedeke's  Grundriss,  vols. 
4  (2)  and  4  (3)  of  the  3rd  edition,  these  being  a  greatly  ampli- 
fied revision  of  vol.  4  of  the  2nd  edition.  Together  they  com- 
prise 1,564  octavo  pages  of  Goethe  bibliography.  From  this  it  is 
patent  that  only  a  minute  portion  of  the  enormous  literature  about 
Goethe  can  be  referred  to  in  the  ensuing  brief  notes.  A  useful 
compilation  of  his  utterances  with  regard  to  his  own  works  is 
provided  in   Graf,   '  Goethe  iiber  seine   Dichtungen,'  9  vols.,   1901- 

1914. 

Biographies  are  numerous.  I  name  in  order  of  time  a  few  that 
seem  most  notable,  or  that  attracted  the  most  attention  when  they 
came  out,  either  for  fulness  of  biographic  detail,  or  for  discriminat- 
ing criticism,  or  for  interesting  illustrations :  H.  ViehofT,  1847- 
1854;  G.  H.  Lewes,  1885;  H.  Grimm,  1877  (English  translation  by 
S.  H.  Adams,  1880)  ;  H.  Diintzer,  1880  (English  translation  by 
Lyster,  1883);  K.  Heinemann,  1895;  R.  M.  Meyer,  1895;  A. 
Bielschowsky,  1896-1898  (English  translation  by  Cooper,  1905- 
1908)  ;  G.  Witkowski,  1899;  E.  Engel,  1909:  L.  Geiger,  1909;  H.  S. 
Chamberlain,  1912;  G.  Brandes   (Danish),  1915. 

355 


356  APPENDIX 

CHAPTER  I 

There  is  much  literature  about  Goethe's  mother ;  see  Goedeke, 
4  (2),  673.  Her  letters  have  been  well  edited  by  A.  Koster, 
'  Briefe  der  Frau  Rat/  1904.  See  also  K.  Heinemann,  '  Goethes 
Mutter,'  1891.  There  are  English  books  about  her  by  A.  S.  Gibbs, 
1880,  and  by  M.  Reeks,  191 1.  Regarding  Cornelia  Goethe,  see  G. 
Witkowski,  '  Cornelia,  die  Schwester  Goethes,'   1903. 

Page  5.  Frau  Aja.  The  affectionate  nickname  is  from  an  old 
tale,  *  Die  Heymons  Kinder.'  The  first  citation  is  from  a  letter 
of  Nov.  14,  1785,  to  Charlotte  von  Stein;  the  second  from  a  let- 
ter of  May  16,  1807,  to  Christiane  von  Goethe. 

P.  6.  For  the  'well-known  verses'  (Vom  Vater  hab'  ich  die 
Statur,  etc.),  see  Works  3,  368. 

P.  7.  On  Goethe's  dislike  of  luxury  see  Conversations  8,  62, 
under  date  of  March  25,  1831. 

P.  8.  Frankfort  reminiscences  in  *  Faust.'  See  Thomas's  edi- 
tion of  Part  I,  p.  2'jz- 

P.  9.  Comte  de  Thoranc.  On  the  uncertain  spelling  of  the 
name  see  Goethe-Jahrbuch  5,  406;  also  M.  Schubart's  book  *Der 
Konigs-lieutenant,'  1896,  chap.  4. 

P.  12.  'There  I  would  sit,'  etc.  See  Bettina  von  Arnim's 
'  Goethes  Briefwechsel  mit  einem  Kinde,'  H.  Grimm's  edition,  p.  358. 

CHAPTER  H 

Goedeke  4  (2),  206  ff.,  lists  considerably  more  than  a  hundred 
articles  and  brochures  relating  to  Goethe's  student  life,  not  includ- 
ing the  too  copious  Friederike  literature,  for  which  see  Goedeke 
4  (3),  91  ff.  Suffice  it  to  mention  the  very  full  treatment  by  Vogel 
and  Traumann,  '  Goethe  als  Student,'  1910. 

P.  20.  'As  if  the  Holy  Ghost,'  etc.,  and  the  other  'persiflage'; 
'Faust,'  1.  i9ioff. 

P.  22.    'The  Briton.'    Letters  i,  24. 

P.  27.   '  My  present  mode  of  life,'  etc.    Letters  i,  200. 

CHAPTER  HI 

For  Goethe  at  Wetzlar  see  H.  Gloel,  'Goethes  Wetzlarer  Zeit,' 
191 1 ;  for  the  Werther  craze,  J.  W.  Appell,  '  Werther  und  seine 
Zeit,'  4th  ed.,  1896.  As  all  the  contributions  to  the  Frankfort 
Gelehrte  Anzeigen  were  anonymous  it  is  not  easy  to  pick  out 
Goethe's  with  perfect  assurance ;  see  M.  Morris.  '  Goethes  und 
Herders  Anteil  an  dem  Jahrgang  1772  der  Frankfurter  Gelehrten 
Anzeigen,'   1909. 

P.  45.  '  To  him  that  loved  thee,'  etc.  Works  4,  190.  Text  of 
the  '  Wanderer,'  Works  2,  170. 

P.  47.    'If  the  author  had  known,*  etc.    Works  37,  252. 

P.  48.  Byron's  '  mingling  with  the  universe ' ;  '  Childe  Harold,' 
(canto  4,  stanza  178). 

P.  51.  '  Form  is  form,'  etc.  See  J.  W.  Braun,  '  Goethe  im 
Urtheile  seiner  Zeitgenossen,'   i,  6. 

P.  53.    '  Be  a  man,*  etc.     Works  4,  162. 


APPENDIX  357 

CHAPTER  IV 

Much  literature  relating  to  Weimar  in  Goethe's  time,  to  the  rul- 
ing house,  the  court  circle,  their  social  relations,  gossip,  amuse- 
ments, etc.,  is  listed  in  Goedeke  4  (2),  706  ff.  For  the  '  Brief e 
aus  der  Schweiz,'  see  Works  19,  197. 

P.  65.    The  hint  to  Klopstock  is  found  in  Letters  3,  63. 

P.  67.    'How  I  have  learned,'  etc.    Letters  3,  191. 

P.  68.  '  I  have  been  right  close,'  etc.  Letters  3,  239 ;  the  '  straw- 
sack  in  the  little  room,'  Letters  4,  52. 

P.  70.    '  Could  think  just  nothing,'  etc.     Letters  5,  337. 

P.  ']2.  The  remark  concerning  Spinoza,  Works  28,  288;  the 
quotation  from  Spinoza,  '  Ethics,'  part  5,  prop.  19. 

P.  78.   The  slighting  remark  about  '  Elpenor,'  Letters  13,  194. 

CHAPTER  V 

While  not  published  till  long  afterwards,  Goethe's  '  Italian  Jour- 
ney,' '  Campaign  in  France,'  and  '  Siege  of  Mainz,'  all  relate  to 
the  period  treated  in  this  chapter.  On  Goethe  in  Italy  see  espe- 
cially J.  R.  Haarhaus,  '  Auf  Goethes  Spuren  in  Italien,'  1896-1897; 
also  C.  von  Klenze,  '  The  Interpretation  of  Italy,'  1907.  Other 
literature  in  abundance  is  listed  in  Goedeke  4   (3),  454  ff. 

P.  83.  '  The  wrinkles  that  had  formed,'  etc.  Works  30,  34 ;  'it 
lies  in  my  nature,'  etc.     Works  30,  70. 

P.  84.  '  Had  I  not  taken  the  resolution.'  etc.  Diaries  i,  290;  the 
expressions  of  disgust  ('always  a  suffering  hero,'  etc.),  Diaries 
I,  307. 

P.  85.    '  Every  day  some  new,'  etc.     Works  30,  212. 

P.  86.    '  Albeit  I  am  still  the  same,'  etc.     Letters  8,  72. 

P.  88.    '  I  should  prefer  to  throw  it  into  the  fire,'  etc.     Works 

31,   54- 

P.  95.  '  Such  a  dear,'  etc.  '  Briefe  der  Frau  Rat,'  2,  151  (Apr. 
7,  1807). 

P.  97.    '  The  painful  emotion,'  etc.     Works  32,  429. 

P.  99.    'Happy  on  classical  soil,'  etc.    Works  i,  239 

P.  100.    '  Erstwhile  I  had  a  love,'  etc.     Works  i,  309. 

P.  Id.    '  If  you  will  continue,'  etc.     Letters  9,  224. 

CHAPTER  VI 

Goethe-Schiller  literature,  seeing  that  their  relations  form  an  im- 
portant chapter  in  the  lives  of  both,  is  naturally  very  abundant; 
see  Goedeke  4  (2),  689  ff.  There  are  German  editions  of  their 
correspondence  by  F.  Muncker,  1893,  and  H.  S.  Chamberlain,  1905, 
and  an  English  translation  by  Schmitz,  1877-1879.  The  original 
Xenia  manuscript  was  published  in  full  in  1893  as  vol.  8  of  the 
Schriften  der  Goethe  Gesellschaft.  Other  volumes  of  the  same 
series  deal  with  '  Das  Weimarer  Hoftheater  unter  Goethes  Leitung,' 
and  with  '  Goethe  und  die  Romantik.'  On  this  last  subject  see  also 
Haym,  '  Die  Romantische  Schule,'  3rd  ed.,  by  Walzel,  1914. 


358  APPENDIX 

P.  104.  'But  that,'  said  Schiller,  etc.     Scientific  Writings  11,  17. 

P.  112.  Fr.  Schlegel  on  'Romantic'  poetry:  Athencpum,  i 
(2),  28. 

P.  115.  Possneck.  See  C.  J.  Kullmer,  '  Possneck  und  Hermann 
und  Dorothea,'  Heidelberg,   1910. 

P.  116.  '  Faust '  as_  its  author's  sorrow;  1.  21. 

P,  121.  '  In  limitation,'  etc.     Works  4,   129. 

P.  122.  '  When  the  healthy  nature,'  etc.     Works  46,  22. 

CHAPTER  VH 

P.  125.  The  quotations  are  from  '  Epilog  zu  Schillers  Glocke/ 
Works  16,  165. 

P.  126.  'We  live,'  etc.  Letters  19,  204;  'the  little  friend,'  etc. 
Letters  19,  197. 

P.  127.    '  Scarcely  had  you  gone,'  etc.     Letters  19,  213. 

P.  128.  For  Goethe's  account  of  his  interviews  with  Napoleon 
see  Works  36,  269. 

P.  130.    '  I  will  gladly  confess,'  etc.     Letters  20,  225. 

P.  133.  '  Nature  and  Art,'  etc.  Works  4,  129 ;  '  Lieb  Kind,'  etc. 
Works  2,  12. 

P.  143.    The  citation  from  Luden :  Conversations  3,  103. 

CHAPTER  Vni 

For   Suleika  see   '  Briefwechsel  zwischen   Goethe  und   Marianne 
von  Willemer,'  edited  by  Creizenach,  2nd  ed.,  1878. 
P.  151.    'Even  a  wise  man,'  etc.     'Faust,'  1.  1174. 
P.  153.    '  The  Devil  and  his  grandmother,'  etc.     Letters  20,  92. 
P.  157.    '  I  noticed  this  evening,'  etc.     Conversations  6,  7. 
P.  160.    *  My  life  is  to  be  a  wandering,'  etc.     Works  24,  10. 
P.  164.    '  Mephistopheles,  who,'  etc.     Works  15   (2),  173. 
P.  167.    '  Spacious  world,'  etc.     Works  3,  71. 

CHAPTER  IX 

Much  has  been  written  of  Goethe's  philosophy  and  evolutionism; 
see  Goedeke  4  (2),  433  ff.  I  single  out  for  mention  here:  E.  Caro, 
La  philosophic  de  Goethe,  1866;  O.  Harnach,  '  Goethe  in  der  Epoche 
seiner  Vollendung,'  18S7 ;  R-  Steiner,  '  Goethes  Weltanschauung,' 
1897 :  H.  Siebeck,  '  Goethe  als  Denker,'  1902 ;  R.  Magnus,  '  Goethe 
als  Naturforscher,'  1906;  E.  A.  Boucke,  'Goethes  Weltanschauung 
auf  historischer  Grundlage,'   1907. 

P.  175.  The  Faust-passages  alluded  to  are  11.  1948  ff.,  1781,  and 
1830  ff. 

P.  177-    'When   I  had  sought,'  etc.     Works  28,  288. 

P.  178.    Spinoza  as  a  man  and  a  brother.     Letters  2,  156. 

P.  179.    '  What  were  a  God,'  etc.     Works  3,  73. 

P.  180.  '  Since  reason  demands,'  etc.  Spinoza's  '  Ethics,'  part  4, 
prop.  18,  scholium;  passion  as  a  'confused  idea,'  ibid.,  part  5,  prop. 
3  ;  '  I  noticed  moreover,'  etc.  '  Improvement  of  the  Intellect,'  near 
the  beginning. 


APPENDIX  359 

P.  i8i.  'Whatsoever  frees  our  minds,'  etc.  Works  42  (2),  174; 
'What  government  is  best,'  etc.  Works  42  (2),  159;  the  stanza 
from  the  '  Mysteries,'  Works  16,  178. 

P.  182.  'Giving  up  our  existence,'  etc.  Works  42  (2),  150 ;  *  we 
put  one  passion  in  place,'  etc.,  Works  29,  10;  'Soul  of  the  World,' 
etc..  Works  3,  81. 

P.  183.    '  Since  our  excellent  Kant,'  etc.     Letters  24,  227. 

P.  184.    '  One  can  not  imagine,'  etc.     Works  33,  196. 

P.  185.  '  In  the  progressive  changes,'  etc.  Scientific  Writings 
7,  12. 

P.  187.  'But  as  matter  never,'  etc.  Scientific  Writings  2,  11.  On 
the  authorship  of  the  essay  '  Die  Natur '  see  '  Schriften  der  Goethe 
Gesellschaft,'  7,  393  ff. 

P.  188.  '  The  more  imperfect  a  creature,'  etc.  Scientific  Writ- 
ings 6,  10. 

P.  190.  The  citations  in  order:  Works  28,  209,  and  2,  230,  and 
Diaries  i,  112. 

P.  191.  'In  breathing,  lo,'  etc.  Works  6,  11  ;  'our  highest  gift,' 
etc.,  Schriften  der  Goethe  Gesellschaft,  21,  no.  391  ff. 

P.  192.  '  To  keep  oneself  afloat,'  etc.  Boucke.  '  Goethes  Weltan- 
schauung,' p.  355.  For  the  reference  to  '  Tasso  '  see  1.  930.  '  Legis- 
lators who  promise,'   etc.     Goethe-Jahrbuch  22,   17. 

P.  193.    '  Was  ihm  gemass  ist.'    Works  28,  27. 

P.  194.    The  poem  '  General  Confession.'    Works  i,  126. 

P.  196.    '  From  everywhere  streams,'  etc.    Works  3,  363. 

CHAPTER  X 

P.  197.  '  To  Goethe  belongs,'  etc.  Populare  wissenschaftliche 
Vortrage,  erstes  Heft,'  1876,  p.  37.  Haeckel  is  cited  from  '  Die 
Naturanschauung  von  Goethe,  Darwin  und  Lamarack,'  1882,  p.  32 ; 
Du  Bois-Reymond  from  his  address  '  Goethe  und  kein  Ende.'  1883. 

P.  200.    '  I  am  now  living,'  etc.     Letters  4,  285. 

P.  201.  '  Sitting  on  a  high  and  naked  peak,'  etc.  Scientific  Writ- 
ings 9,  173. 

P.  202.  '  When  Nature  in  herself,'  etc.  '  Faust,'  11.  10095  ff-, 
Taylor's  version  ;   '  without  haste  and  without  rest,'  Works  3,  247. 

P.  203.    '  Be  the  case  as  it  may,'  etc.     Scientific  Writings  9,  257. 

P.  205.    '  The  time  will  come,'  etc.     Letters  6,  77. 

P.  206.  '  Geologic  problems  and  their  Solution.'  Scientific  Writ- 
ings 9,  254. 

P.  207.  '  Cutting  up  and  counting,'  etc.  Scientific  Writings  6, 
107 ;  '  if  I  could  only  impart,'  etc.,  Letters  7,  242. 

P.  208.    'It  is  delightful,'  etc.     Works  30  (i),  89. 

P.  210.  'This,  then,  we  have  no,'  etc.     Scientific  Writings  8,  71. 

P.  212.  'Man  is  most  closely  akin,'  etc.  Letters  6,  389;  'the 
ranks  of  living  creatures,'  etc.,  '  Faust,'  11.  3225  ff.  '  Nature  can 
compass,'  etc.,  '  Riemers  Briefe  von  und  an  Goethe,'  p.  311. 

P.  213.    The  two  citations:   Scientific  Writings  6,   120,  and  8,  18. 

P.  2T4.  '  The  question  to  be  asked,'  etc.  Scientific  Writings  8, 
17;  the  verses,  'Faust,'  672  ff. 


36o  APPENDIX 

CHAPTER  XI 

P.  219.     'Letter  of  Pastor '.     Works  zy,  155. 

P.  220.  *  But  we  submit,'  etc.  Works  37,  249.  *  We  must  say  it,' 
etc..  Works  Z7.  255. 

P.  221.  '  Thank  you,  dear  brother,'  etc.     Letters  2,  156. 

P.  222.  'When  I  feel,'  etc.  Works  19,  8;  'the  most  casual 
walk,'  etc.,  Works  19,  76. 

P.  22X  The  verses :  '  Faust '  11.  3432  ff.,  Taylor's  version, 

P.  226.  The  three  reverences.     Works  24,  242. 

P.  227.  '  You  have  treated,'  etc.     Letters  9,  18. 

P.  228  '  So  much  I  can,'  etc.     Letters  6,  14. 

P.  229.  '  I  can  know  nothing,'  etc.     Conversations  3,  72. 

P.  230.  The  citations  in  order :  Conversations  8,  43 ;  8,  35 ;  5,  235. 

P.  231.  The  citations:   Conversations  4,  339,  and  8,   147. 

P.  2Z2.  '  The  understanding  does  not  reach,'  etc.  Conversations 
7,  16. 

P.  233.  The  citations :  Conversations  8,  149,  and  3,  308. 

P.  234.  The  citations :  Conversations  4,  294 ;  5,  74 ;  7,  49. 

CHAPTER  Xn 

P.  238.  '  The  clearest,  largest,'  etc.  Matthew  Arnold,  *  A  French 
Critic  on  Goethe.' 

P.  240.    The  passage   from  the   Prelude  to  '  Faust ' ;   11,   186-187. 

P.  243.  The  songs  referred  to  are:  Mailied,  Works  i,  72;  Es 
schlug  mein  Herz,  i,  68;  Kleine  Blumen,  kleine  Blatter,  i,  74. 

P.  244.  The  songs :  Dir  darf  dies  Blatt,  Works  i,  75 ;  An  Be- 
linden,  i,  71. 

P.  245.  The  songs:  Gliick  und  Traum,  Works  i,  45;  Christel, 
I,  18. 

P.  246.  Konig  in  Thule,  Works  i,  171;  Heidenroslein,  i,  16; 
Auf  dem  See,  i,  78;  Jagers  Abendlied,  i,  99;  Der  du  von  dem 
Himmel  bist,  and  Uber  alien  Gipfeln,  i,  98;  Erlkonig,  i,  167;  Der 
Fischer,  i,  169;  Ilmenau,  2,  141;  Hans  Sachsens  poetische  Sendung, 
16,  123. 

P.  247.  Fullest  wieder  Busch  und  Tal,  Works  i,  100;  Edel  sei  der 
Mensch,  2,  83 ;  Des  Menschen  Seele,  2,  56 ;  Kennst  du  das  Land, 
I,   161;  Wer  nie  sein  Brot,  2,  118. 

P.  248.  Rastlose  Liebe,  Works  i,  84;  Wonne  der  Wehmut,  i, 
97;    Das    Gottliche,    2,    83.     The   verses    are    from    Wordsworth's 

*  Tintern  Abbey.' 

P.  249.    '  Thou  shalt  deny  thyself,'  etc.     '  Faust,'  1.  1549. 

P.  250.    Byron   on    Rome :    '  Childe   Harold,'   canto   4,   stanza   78. 

*  Oh,  how  happy.'  etc.     Works  i,  242. 

P.  251.  'The  central  peace,'  etc.  Wordsworth's  'Excursion,'  book 
4.  '  When  on  the  spindle,'  etc.  '  Faust,'  11.  142  ff.,  Taylor's 
version. 

P.  252.    '  His  ear  perceives,'  etc.     '  Tasso,'  11.  160  ff. 

P.  253.    '  For  he  was  ours,'  etc.     Works  16,  166. 

P.  254.    '  Let    flames    bring    rest,'    etc.,    Works    i,    226.      '  Ergo 


APPENDIX  361 

Bibamus,'  Works   i,   144.     '  Take  my  life  in  one  big  chunk,'  etc., 
Works  3,  305- 
P.  257.    '  What  you  say,'  etc.    Works  3,  315. 

CHAPTER  XIV 

P.  283.  The  early  poem  is  Unschuld.     Works  i,  52. 

P.  286.  The  verses  are  from  '  Childe  Harold,'  HI,  Tj. 

P.  287.  'When  we  hasten  thither,'  etc.  Works  19,  39;  'How  I 
hate  the  word,'  etc.,  Works  19,  51. 

P.  290,  '  Be  a  man,'  etc..  Works  4,  162 ;  '  All  the  wonderful  feel- 
ing,' etc..  Works  19,  12. 

P.  295.  '  His  calling  was  now  clear,'  etc.    Works  51,  69. 

P.  302.  *  Why  not  call  it,'  etc.     Conversations  6,  40. 

CHAPTER  XV 

P.  305.    '  He  who  has  had,'  etc.     Works  37,  207. 

P.  306.  The  citations  in  order :  Letters  2,  120,  and  2,  186.  Works 
ZT,  215,  and  37,  217. 

P.  307.  '  Especially  has  the  tender,'  etc.  Works  Z7y  209 ;  '  What 
we  see  in  nature,'  etc.     Works  37,  210. 

P.  308.    '  What  is  it  that  troubles,'  etc.     Works  51,  122. 

P.  311.    The  citations   from  the  Propylden.     Works  47,   11  ff. 

P.  313.    Literary  sansculottism.     Works  40,  196  ff. 

P.  314.  '  Wonderful,  excellent  Diderot,'  etc.  Works  45,  256,  and 
254.     '  Goethe,  as  usual,'  etc.,  Morley's  '  Diderot,'  Chap.  XL 

P.  315.    'When  we  open  our  sluices,'  etc.     Letters  14,  118. 

P.  317.  For  the  comments  on  the  Wunderhorn  see  Works 
40,  337  ff-     For  the  review  of  '  Athenor,'  Works  40,  332. 

P.  318.    Review  of  Hiller.     Works  42    (2),  24. 

P.  320.    'I  am  moved,'  etc.     Works  42   (2),  59. 

P.  321.  'AH  poetry  should  be,'  etc.  Works  41  (2),  225;  'if  I 
were  to  state,'  etc.,  Works,  Hempel  ed.,  29,  230. 

CHAPTER  XVI 

For  a  carefully  selected  bibliography  of  'Faust,'  see  Thomas's 
(third)   edition  of  Part  I,  Appendix  L 

P.  326.    'I  caught  each  lure,'  etc.     'Faust,'  II.  11434!?. 

P.  328.  The  citation  from  Sophocles  is  from  Jebb's  translation 
of  the  '  Oedipus  at  Colonus,'  11.  1225  ff. 

P.  350.    'So  let  him  travel,'  etc.    'Faust,'  11.  ii449ff. 


GENERAL   INDEX 


Aja,  Frau,  Goethe's  mother,  4,  5, 

12-13,  29,  41,   115 
alchemy,      Goethe's      study     of, 

29-30 
Ariosto,  75 
Arndt,  142 
Arnim  and  Brentano's  Wunder- 

horn,  317 
art,  25-26,  33,  49,  310-313 

Behrisch,   23-24,   241 

beliefs,    Goethe's   religious,   215- 

235,  329 
Belinda,  poetic  name  for  Frau- 

lein    Schonemann,   q.v. 
Bible,   Goethe's   attitude   toward 

the,  46-47,  231 
Boisseree,   Sulpiz,   154 
botany,    Goethe's    study    of,    69, 

100,   123,   158,   185,  206-208 
Brentano,   Bettina,   145,   153 
Brion,   Friederike,   38-39,   68 
Brocken,   Goethe  climbs  the,  67 
Buff,   Lotte,  48 
Burger,  51 
Byron,   164 

Catholicism,  Goethe's  attitude 
toward,  154,  226,  227,  319 

Clodius,  22 

color,  Goethe's  theory  of,  139- 
141,  199,  200 

*  Conversations '  of  Goethe,  see 
Eckermann,  Falk,  Luden 

cosmogony,   Goethe's,   174 

critic,  Goethe  as,  304-324 

Darmstadt,  44,  45 

De  Rosne,   10 

Diderot,  313-314 

dramatist,  Goethe  as,  258-280 

Dresden,  26 

Du  Bois-Reymond,   197-198,   I99 


Eckermann,  Goethe's  conversa- 
tions with,  144,  157,  162,  166, 
228,  230,  231,  232.  233,  234,  271, 
277,  302,  304,  321,  323-324,  351 

epigrammatic  poetry  of  Goethe, 
255 

Erfurt,   129-130 

evolutionism  of  Goethe,  199- 
200,  207-214 

Fahlmer,  Johanna,  64 

Falk,  Johannes,  229 

Faust,  Doctor,  folk-tale  of,  14 

fiction.     Goethe    as     writer    of, 

281-303 
folk-songs,  collected  by  Goethe, 

37 
Frankfort-on-the-Main,   3,   4,   9, 

40,  49,  59 

Frommann,  bookseller,  132-133 

Gelehrte    Anseigen,     Frankfort, 

46-47,  51,  304,  305,  306 
Gellert,  20-21 
geology,   Goethe's   study  of,  68- 

69,  200-206 
Goethe,  August  von,  the  poet's 

son,   159 
Goethe,  Catherine  Elisabeth,  the 

poet's  mother,  4,  5,   12-13,  29, 

41,  115 

Goethe,  Cornelia,  the  poet's  sis- 
ter, 6,  14,  41 
Goethe,  Friedrich   Georg,  3 
Goethe,  Hans  Christian,  3 
Goethe,     Johann      Caspar,     the 
poet's    father,    3,    5-6,    14-15, 
IIS 
Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang.     See 
index  to  writings  below ;  also 
table   of    contents    at   the   be- 
ginning of  the  volume. 


363 


364 

Grimmelshausen,  282 
Grubel,  317 


Haeckel,  on  Goethe  as  scientist, 
197 

Hafiz,  15s 

Hamann,  47 

Harz  Mountains,  67 

Hebel's  Alemannic  poems,  317 

Heidelberg,   154 

Helmholtz,  on  Goethe  as  scien- 
tist, 197 

Herder,  34-38,  41,  42,  47,  Si,  64, 
82,  121,  152,  196,  227,  265-266, 
269 

Herzlieb,  Wilhelmina,  132-133 

Hiller,   poems   of,  318 

Homer,  36,   120 

Horen.    98,     104,     105-108,    301, 

304 
Humboldt,  Alexander  von,  152 
Humboldt,    Wilhelm    von,     152, 

167 

Illuminati,   occult  order,  76 
Italy,    Goethe's    sojourn   in,   83- 
94,  100,  207 

Jena,  103,  123,  126,  127,,  132,  151 
Jena,  battle  of,   126 
Jena,  University  of,  127-128 
Jerusalem,  young  man,  49,  52 

Kant,  Immanuel,   183-185,  188 

Karl  August,  duke  of  Weimar, 
see  Weimar,   duke  of 

Karlsbad,  123,  125,  132,  I54,  158 

Kaufmann,  Angelica,  85 

Kayser,   composer,   91 

Kestner,  48,  50 

Klein's  A  thenar,  Goethe's  re- 
view of,  317-318 

Kleist,   Heinrich   von,    153 

Klettenberg,  Fraulein  von,  28- 
29 

Klopstock,  14-15 

Knebel,  63,   152,   155 

Koblenz,  48-49 

Kotzebue,   151 

Kunst  und  Alterthum,  158,  304, 
319,  321 


GENERAL  INDEX 


La  Roche,  Frau  von,  48-49,  286 
La  Roche,  Maximihane  von,  49, 

52 
Lavater,  58,  95 
Leipsic,  19 

Lessing,  50,  264-265,  266 
letters    of    Goethe,    quoted,    22, 
27,  64,  66,   loi,   126,   127,   130, 
183,  193,  204-205,  207,  208,  217, 
221,  227,  228,  306,  321 
Levetzow,  Ulrike  von,  158-159 
Lili  (Fraulein  Schonemann),  59, 

68,  244 
Literaturseitung,  Jena,  316,  318 
love-poems  of   Goethe,  242-246 
Luden,  Professor,  143 
Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  204 

magic,  in  '  Faust,'  329,  330,  331, 

334-335,  349 

Mainz,  loi 

Merck,  J.  H.,  44,  48,  64 

Merkur,  55 

Meyer,  Heinrich,  artist,  85,  120 

Moritz,  86 

Musenahnanach,  Gottingen,  55 

Musenalmanach  (Goethe  and 
Schiller),   109,  114 

mystic  nature  of  Goethe's  be- 
liefs, 215-224,  225 

Naples,  Goethe  at,  88 
Napoleon,    126,    127,    128-132 
Neptunists,  202,  203 
Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  100,  139,  140 
novelist,  Goethe  as,  281-303 

occult    studies,    Goethe's,    28-30, 

329 
Oeser,  25-26 
Ossian,  37,  44,  287 

painting,   Goethe  occupied  with, 

49,  80,  89,  93 
Pelagianism,  347 
Perfectibilists,  occult  order,  76 
Persian  poetry,  155 
philosophy  of  Goethe,   171-196 
Pindar,  43 

poet,  Cioethe  as,  236-257 
Possneck,     Thuringian     village, 

115 


GENERAL  INDEX 


365 


Prometheus,  journal,  136 
Propyl'den,  120,  304,  311,  314 
Pyrmont,   123 

religious   beliefs,   Goethe's,   215- 

235,  329^ 
reviews,    Goethe    as    writer    of, 

304-324 
Richardson,  283,  280 
Riggi,   Maddalena,  93 
Robinsonades,  282 
Romanticists,    113,   121,   133,   153 
Rome,  Goethe  at,  85-88,  89-93 
Rosicrucians,  76 
Rousseau,  284,  286-287,  288 

Sachs,     botanist,     on     Goethe's 

theories,  210 
Sachs,  Hans,  51 
Schelhorn,  Cornelia,  3 
Schelling,   142,  153,  188 
Schiller,     103-110,    113-114,    123, 

276,  315 
Schlegel,  A.  W.,  121 
Schlegel,  Friedrich,  121,  153 
Schonemann,      Anna     Elizabeth 

(Lili),  59,  68,  244 
Schonkopf,  Anna  Katherine,  22,- 

24 
Schroter.  Corona,  actress,  7S 
Schulthess,  Frau  Barbara,  79 
scientific    studies,    Goethe's,    69- 
70,    81,    99-100,    123,    138-141, 
158,   185,   189-190,   197-214 
Sesenheim,  village,  38-39 
Shakspere,  37,  269 
songs    of    Goethe,    59,    240-247, 

254 
Spinoza,  71-72,   176-182,  248 
Stael  Madame  de,  145 
Stein,   Frau   Charlotte   von,   65- 

67,  68,  74,  83,  94,  96,  152,  212 


Strassburg,    31-34,    40-41 
Switzerland,  journeys  to,  59,  68, 
113 

Tasso,  75 

Tell,  William,  legend  of,   114 

Textor,    Johann    Wolfgang,    the 

poet's  grandfather,  4 
Thoranc,   Comte  de,  9-10 
Tieck,  153 
Tischbein,   artist,  85,  86 

Venice,  Goethe  at,  84,  100 

Voltaire,  121,   129,  130 

Voss,  T14 

Vulcanists,  203 

Vulpius,  Christiane,  94-96,  126 

Wagner,  Richard,  351 
Wandering  Jew,    14 
Wartburg   festival,    150 
Weimar,    61-65,    69-75,    94,    loi, 

123,  124-128,   148,  275-276 
Weimar,  Karl  August,  duke  of, 

60,   62-65,   73,   75,  82,  94,   loi, 
125,  128,  129,  148-149,  159 
Weimar   theater,    loi,    121,    123, 

124,  130,  151-152,  153.  275-276 
Werner,  Zacharias,  132-133,  153 
Wetzlar,  47-48 

Wieland,    51,    54-55,   62,    63,    75, 

127,  152,  283-284,  364 
Wiesbaden,    154 
Willemer,   Marianne,    155-156 
Winckelmann,  25,   122 
Wordsworth,   William,   243,   248 

youthful  poems  of  Goethe,  240- 
246 

Zelter,  132,  152,  321 


INDEX   OF   GOETHE'S   WRITINGS 


Achilleid,  fragment,  120-121 
After     Falconet     and     Beyond 

Falconet,  304 
'  Again    thou    fillest    copse    and 

vale,'  247 
Alexis  and  Dora,  121 
Amine,  lost  work,   15 
Annette,  24 
Annual  Fair  at  Plundersweilern, 

55 
Another      Word      for      Young 

Poets,  321 
Autobiography      of      Benvenuto 

Cellini,  translation,  106-107 
Awakening  of  Epimenides,   148, 

280 

Belshazzar,   unfinished  play,    15, 

21 
Birds,  ']Z,  261 
Bliss   of   Melancholy,  248 
Bride  of   Corinth,    114,  251,  254 
Brother  and  Sister,  73-74,  261 

Campaign  in  France,  loi,  184 

Christel,  245 

Christ's   Descent   into    Hell,    15, 

242 
Citizen  General,   loi 
Classico-Romantic      Phantasma- 

gory,   165 
Claudine    von    Villa    Bella,    55, 

91 
Clavigo,  56,  261,  262,  273-275 
Collector  and  his  Friends,  120 

Dedication,  76,  249 

De  Legislatoribus    (lost  essay), 

40 
Diversions    of    German    Exiles, 
107-108,  115,  301-302 
Divine,  The,  75,  248 


Egmont,    58,    77,    82,    89-91,    94, 

261,  277-278 
Elective  Affinities,   124,   134-136, 

234,  297-300 
Elf-king,  ballad,  73,  74,  246 
Elpenor,  fragment,  78,  82 
Elysium :    To   Urania,   45 
Ephemerides,  note-book,  30 
Epilog  to   Schiller's   '  Bell,'   124- 

125 
Epimenides,  Awakening  of,  148, 

280 
Ergo  bibamus,  254 
Erwin  and  Elmire,  55,  91 
Excited    Folk,    unfinished    play, 

lOI 

Faust,  27-28,  29,  41,  44,  58,  77, 
82,  92-93,  96,  113,  116-119,  124, 
137-138,  163-166,  172-173,  175, 
212,  213,  223-224,  251,  262,  325- 
352 

Fellow-culprits,  31,  261 

Fisher-maid,   73 

Fisherman,  74,  246 

General  Confession,  194 
Geologic     Problems    and     their 

Solution,  206 
German   Architecture,  49 
Gods,  Heroes,  and  Wieland,  54- 

55,  261,  304 
Gotz   von    Berlichingen,   41,   42- 

43,  50-51,  251,  261,  267-271 
Grand  Cophta,   loi,  261 

Hans    Sachs's    Poetic    Mission, 

74,  246 
Harz  Journey  in  Winter,  74 
Heath-rose,  246 

Hermann  and  Dorothea,  114-116 
Hunter's    Evening-song,   246 


366 


INDEX  OF  GOETHE'S  WRITINGS 


367 


Ilmenau,  75,  246 

Interlude    to    Faust     (Classico- 

Romantic        Phantasmagory), 

165 
Iphigenie,  ']'],  84,  86-89,  94,  261, 

278-279 
Italian  Journey,  89 

Joseph,   15 

Julius    Caesar,    projected    work, 
41 

Karlsbad  Poems,  256 

King  of  Thule,  59,  246 

'  Knowst  thou  the  land,'  247 

'  Let  man  be  noble,'  247 
Letter  of  Pastor — (anonymous), 

47,  219-220 
Letters    from    Switzerland,    59, 

106 
Lila,  'jz,  261 

Literary    Sansculottism,    313 
'  Little  flowers,  tiny  leaflets,'  243 
Lover's    Wayward    Humor,    24- 

25,  261 

Mahomet,   by   Voltaire,   transla- 
tion.  121,   129 
Maid    of    Oberkirch,    unfinished 

play,   lOi 
Mdrchen,  107-108,  302 
Marienbad   Elegy,   159 
Metamorphosis  of  Plants,  208 
Mieding's  death,  74-75 
'  My  heart  beat   fast,'   243 
Mysteries,     fragmentary     work, 
75-76,  181,  249 

Natural  Daughter,   1 19-120,  261, 

280 
Nausicaa,  projected   tragedy,  89 
New  Life,  New  Love,  59 
New   Songs,  31,   242 
Novcllc,  302-303 

One  and  All,  182 
On  the  Lake,  246 
'  Over  all  the  heights,'  74,  246 

Palaeophron   and   Xeoterpe,    121 
Pandora,  fragment,  136-137 


Pater  Brey,  55,  261 

Poetic  Mission  of  Hans  Sachs, 
74,  246 

Poetry  and  Truth,  13,  14,  16, 
17,  20,  23,  31,  35,  38,  44,  56, 
141,  143-146,  152,  157,  173-^74, 
177-178,  182,  190,  191,  274,  277, 
319 

Prometheus,  unfinished  work, 
57-58,  273 

Proserpina,  7Z 

Restless  Love,  248 
Reynard   the   Fox,    102 
Roman  Elegies,  98-99,  106,  249- 
250 

Satyros,  55,  261 

Siege   of   Mainz,   loi 

Song  of  the  Spirits  over  the 
Waters,  74 

Song  over  the  Unconfidence  to- 
ward myself    (English),  22 

*  Soul  of  man  is  like  the  water,' 

247 
Stella,   56-57,  261,   275 

Tag-   und  Jahreshcfte,   158 

Tame  Xenia,  256 

Tancred,  by  Voltaire,  transla- 
tion, 121 

Theory  of  Color,  128,  132,  138- 
141 

'  This  message  brings  a  Httle 
chain,'  244 

*  Thou  who  art  in   heaven,'   74, 

246 
Torquato   Tasso,    77-78,   82,   84, 

88,  93,  96-98,  252,  261,  278-280 
To  the  Moon,  74 
Triumph  of  Sentimentalism,  7Z 

*Ur-Faust,'  332 

Venetian  Epigrams,   lOO 

Wanderer,  45-46 
Wanderer's    Stormsong,  44 
Werther,   47,   48,    50,    52-54,   79, 

82.   129,  222-223,  281,  285-291, 

297 


36S 


INDEX  OF  GOETHE'S  WRITINGS 


West-Eastern  Divan,  I55-I57, 
191 

'Who  never  ate  his  bread  v^^ith 
tears,'  247 

Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprentice- 
ship, 28,  79,  80,  1 10- 1 13,  229, 
232,  291-296,  308-309 

Wilhelm     Meister's     Theatrical 


Mission,   78-80,    no,   2^2,  295, 

308-309 
Wilhelm   Meister's  Wanderings, 

no,  159-163,  206,  226,  296-297. 

302 
Winckelmann,  122-123,  251 

Xenia,  108-110,  203,  313 


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